Considerations

33 Comments so far ↓

• Dan // Jan 24, 2010 at 20:03

  Yes, I’m sure you are glad to live in Jerusalem, where peo­ple are more con­ser­v­a­tive. That cer­tainly seems to fit your pat­tern of beliefs that have been devel­op­ing over the last sev­eral years.

  By the way, why are you so opposed to the cur­rent trend? By your count, sin­gle men should be able to line up eli­gi­ble, beau­ti­ful, intel­li­gent women by the bushel. What’s the problem?

  “Rather, they are choos­ing to opt-out of insti­tu­tions like mar­riage and long-term rela­tion­ships because hav­ing a spouse is increas­ingly viewed as a raw deal for men. In the event of divorce, a man will prob­a­bly lose half of his assets — even if his wife earns as much or more than he does — and likely be unable to see his chil­dren often. Men are scared of being chained to a woman who may — right after the wed­ding — turn into a shrew or barely want to have sex. Why not just live in “Guy­land” and have casual sex with young women from bars until you are old? Why deal with the insan­ity and game-playing involved with dat­ing women? Remem­ber: Women want mar­riage more than men; women need to give men a rea­son to get married.”

  Herein lies the crux to your post. YOU view mar­riage as a raw deal for men. YOU are wor­ried about mar­ry­ing a woman that will turn into a shrew and barely want to have sex. YOU want to live in Guy­land and have casual sex with women until you are old. YOU think dat­ing women involves game-playing. YOU don’t want to get married.

  I love being mar­ried. It is the sin­gle great­est fac­tor in my per­sonal hap­pi­ness. I could cite sta­tis­tics to you all day long about the ways in which mar­riage ben­e­fits men, but let’s sum­ma­rize. Mar­ried men are MORE likely to: be bet­ter off finan­cially, live longer, have bet­ter men­tal health, and have bet­ter sex. Now, you tell me: why wouldn’t men want to get mar­ried again?  Dan(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: -5 (from 5 votes)

  Reply

• Sam Scott // Jan 24, 2010 at 20:42

  Dan,

  Again you’re mis­tak­ing the argu­ment for the per­son doing the arguing.

  By the way, why are you so opposed to the cur­rent trend? By your count, sin­gle men should be able to line up eli­gi­ble, beau­ti­ful, intel­li­gent women by the bushel. What’s the problem?

  The prob­lem is that peo­ple need a husband/wife for spir­i­tual rea­sons — I could go into Jew­ish mys­ti­cal thought here, but I’ll spare you — as well as other rea­sons like fam­ily, sta­bil­ity, health, and financially.

  I am decry­ing the state of affairs in the West­ern world because this lifestyle destroys the soul.

  YOU view mar­riage as a raw deal for men.

  Mar­riage is a raw deal for men who worry only about sex, video games, and sports. Some things are more impor­tant than that. But, see­ing the cur­rent state of the West­ern male — and it’s partly his own fault as well as the fault of women — I’m say­ing that it is nat­ural for men to be wary of mar­riage. And that’s sad, as I wrote.

  YOU are wor­ried about mar­ry­ing a woman that will turn into a shrew and barely want to have sex.

  All sin­gle men have this fear. I’ve seen too much not to have this fear. This is why it is impor­tant to choose well.

  YOU want to live in Guy­land and have casual sex with women until you are old.

  Again, I do not. I want to get mar­ried, but I’m not going to do it just for the sake of being mar­ried. I am writ­ing from the per­spec­tive of the men I described above. My point is that it is bad that many West­ern men think this way.

  YOU think dat­ing women involves game-playing.

  Most of the time, it does. 99% of the time, it does. Unless a man has found that rare diamond-in-the-rough.

  I love being mar­ried. It is the sin­gle great­est fac­tor in my per­sonal hap­pi­ness. I could cite sta­tis­tics to you all day long about the ways in which mar­riage ben­e­fits men, but let’s sum­ma­rize. Mar­ried men are MORE likely to: be bet­ter off finan­cially, live longer, have bet­ter men­tal health, and have bet­ter sex. Now, you tell me: why wouldn’t men want to get mar­ried again?

  I’m happy for you. I want to be in that posi­tion some­day. But with the way that I fore­see rela­tions between the sexes in the West “pro­gress­ing,” fewer and fewer peo­ple will be in that position.

  Now, my ques­tion: Why do you think women like the one in the arti­cle I quoted are increas­ingly going to sperm banks in their thir­ties?  Sam Scott(Quote)

  VN:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

  Reply

• Dan // Jan 25, 2010 at 03:19

  Because she doesn’t know how to find a part­ner. If she truly found some­one she cared about, it wouldn’t mat­ter if he earned less money than she did. Since we’re all being so mod­ern here, why don’t women mind dat­ing guys that make less money than they do? Men have done it for vir­tu­ally all time. Why can’t women do it? I earn less than my wife — in fact, I earn 52% as much as she does. Does it bother me? Not really. I’m thrilled with my job, and she is thrilled with hers. Since we’re both happy with our jobs, it doesn’t really mat­ter that I earn less than she does.

  But what about peo­ple who are dat­ing, you might ask? I admit, tra­di­tional gen­der roles would dic­tate that men pay for drinks, pay for din­ner, etc. Here’s my reply: how much of your (NOT YOU mean­ing Sam, but you mean­ing a hypo­thet­i­cal per­son) income would you have to spend on dat­ing in order for it to mat­ter? In other words, unless you are spend­ing lit­er­ally thou­sands of dol­lars a year on dat­ing — din­ner, drinks, gifts, trips, etc. — then the amount you spend on dat­ing won’t be a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of your income, and thus your income prob­a­bly won’t become appar­ent. And if it does, and it both­ers the woman that you don’t make a whole lot of money, then she is act­ing ridicu­lous and traditional-gender-bound.

  Let’s use Rachel as an exam­ple. She’s mak­ing good money at work, and she claims to be fit and attrac­tive. Okay. Later in the arti­cle, it is averred that “Given that women pre­fer to find a well-educated, reli­able earner as a hus­band, this cre­ates a sim­ple math prob­lem. Well-educated women can’t find enough equally or better-educated men to marry.” If we assume Rachel believes this, then that is her prob­lem. Why does her part­ner have to be equal or better-educated and make as much or more money than her?

  Let’s make up some inter­ests of hers as well, since the arti­cle doesn’t men­tion them. Let’s say she enjoys ski­ing, camp­ing, hik­ing, etc. (lots of out­door activ­i­ties); is a mem­ber of a book club and reads books end­less; and really enjoys base­ball and is a huge New York Yan­kees fans (sorry, Sam, couldn’t resist that one . Also, let’s say she has a master’s degree, and put her income at $100k. Let’s say she meets a man. He also loves base­ball, and has sea­son tick­ets to the Yan­kees; he also loves camp­ing, hik­ing, spend­ing week­ends and vaca­tions doing active out­door things; and he is an aspir­ing nov­el­ist in his spare time. How­ever, in order to sup­port his writ­ing, he works at Home Depot, has an associate’s degree, and earns $40k.

  Why can’t they be happy together? If they can go camp­ing together, watch base­ball together, and dis­cuss lit­er­a­ture, why can’t they relate? If at this stage either part­ner has a prob­lem with the rela­tion­ship, and the prob­lem is due SOLELY to the income/education dis­par­ity, then that per­son needs to rethink their beliefs regard­ing gen­der roles. If she doesn’t like that he only makes $40k, then that’s her fault that she doesn’t think he’s “good enough.” If he resents that she earns that much more money than he does, then he is inse­cure with him­self. Once you’re mar­ried, it no longer mat­ters who earns what: their com­bined income would be $140k, plenty for two peo­ple to live on. And if their per­sonal lives are com­pat­i­ble, then they ought to be happy. If they are hung up on who brings what finances on the table, then maybe they don’t deserve to be mar­ried. That indi­cates an incred­i­ble degree of self­ish­ness, and self­ish­ness in a rela­tion­ship will inevitably lead to dis­as­ter. They should just stay single.

  I have a follow-up for you now. How would you rem­edy the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion? If you had the abil­ity to deter­mine the pre­pon­der­ance of thought regard­ing gen­der rela­tions, how would you con­struct it? Would you remove people’s inhi­bi­tions regard­ing income and edu­ca­tion dis­par­ity, or would you return to a sit­u­a­tion in which men have higher income and edu­ca­tion, and that’s how it was? Either way would seem to cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion of sat­is­fac­tion and hap­pi­ness in both gen­ders, cor­rect?  Dan(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: -1 (from 1 vote)

  Reply

• Jen // Jan 25, 2010 at 04:05

  First of all, there are just as many women who are wor­ried that their poten­tial hus­band will end up bald, fat, with man boobs, and stop all roman­tic ges­tures once mar­ried. There is a rea­son why many peo­ple look at their sig­nif­i­cant other’s par­ents to see what the future may hold.

  As for peo­ple strug­gling to find a mate, a good part of that is because no one is taught how to eval­u­ate a poten­tial mate. Par­ents teach about sex, teach­ers about health and other aca­d­e­mic sub­jects, but who teaches peo­ple how to relate? You learn social skills mostly through those around you, and if you are around peo­ple in dys­func­tional rela­tion­ships how can you learn to eval­u­ate a poten­tial mate?

  Regard­ing who earns what in a rela­tion­ship, I agree with Dan. If who earns more mat­ters that much to you, then maybe you should stay sin­gle and reeval­u­ate your priorities/insecurities. The bank doesn’t care who earns the money to pay the mort­gage, just that it is paid on time. It wor­ries me that someone’s hap­pi­ness is tied so closely to money.  Jen(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

  Reply

• Sam Scott // Jan 25, 2010 at 14:19

  Jen,

  Regard­ing who earns what in a rela­tion­ship, I agree with Dan. If who earns more mat­ters that much to you, then maybe you should stay sin­gle and reeval­u­ate your priorities/insecurities.

  It would not bother me so much; rather, my point is that many men gen­er­ally are uncom­fort­able with gen­der roles being reversed. And peo­ple should not be sur­prised that this is the case. It’s built into our human natures after hun­dreds of thou­sands of years of evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­ogy.  Sam Scott(Quote)

  VN:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

  Reply

• Mike // Jan 25, 2010 at 16:31

  Crap Sam — you make these whole dis­cus­sions so incred­i­bly painful because all you do is over­gen­er­al­ize men, women, and rela­tion­ships. You expect every rela­tion­ship to fit the exact same mold, and then blame soci­ety for when that doesn’t hap­pen and blame women for going out and want­ing to do some­thing other than stay at home and cook and clean. And of course, any­one who isn’t in the typ­i­cal housewife/breadwinner rela­tion­ship is super unhappy. Ugh.  Mike(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: -1 (from 1 vote)

  Reply

• Sam Scott // Jan 25, 2010 at 17:04

  Fact: There is an increas­ing trend of sin­gle, child­less women in thir­ties who do not want to be sin­gle and childless.

  I’ve attempted to pro­vide a rea­son; all every­one is doing is crit­i­ciz­ing my rea­son. So, I chal­lenge every­one: Pro­vide your own reason.

  Or, bet­ter still, take some time and write a lengthy post in response to this essay:

  http://www.samueljscott.com/2007/10/05/the-battle-of-the-sexes/

  Giv­ing your own rea­son for the prob­lems that I cite in the begin­ning and through­out the essay. I will pub­lish your response as a post by itself.  Sam Scott(Quote)

  VN:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: +2 (from 2 votes)

  Reply

• Mike // Jan 25, 2010 at 18:36

  Do you have a source for your fact?  Mike(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Jeff // Jan 25, 2010 at 20:54

  Here are some inter­est­ing facts. Granted, they are lon­gi­tu­di­nal, but they indi­cate to me that there isn’t some huge cri­sis in the insti­tu­tion of marriage:

  http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db19.htm

  Fur­ther, as some­one pointed out at one point, you can’t have both a sta­ble or grow­ing pop­u­la­tion of mar­ried het­ero­sex­ual men and a declin­ing pop­u­la­tion of mar­ried het­ero­sex­ual women.

  Sure, there prob­a­bly is a grow­ing NUMBER of women over 40 who are unmar­ried, but there’s a grow­ing num­ber of PEOPLE in this world, too.

  As Mike says, Sam, I’d be inter­ested in see­ing some real, solid data, here.  Jeff(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Dan // Jan 25, 2010 at 21:16

  “I’ve attempted to pro­vide a rea­son; all every­one is doing is crit­i­ciz­ing my rea­son. So, I chal­lenge every­one: Pro­vide your own reason.”

  I did. Read my post above. Feel free to con­sider it “a lengthy post in response to (a pre­vi­ous) essay.”

  And, once again, YOU NEVER ANSWERED MY QUESTION!!! Let me repost it here: “How would you rem­edy the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion? If you had the abil­ity to deter­mine the pre­pon­der­ance of thought regard­ing gen­der rela­tions, how would you con­struct it? Would you remove people’s inhi­bi­tions regard­ing income and edu­ca­tion dis­par­ity, or would you return to a sit­u­a­tion in which men have higher income and edu­ca­tion, and that’s how it was? Either way would seem to cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion of sat­is­fac­tion and hap­pi­ness in both gen­ders, cor­rect?”  Dan(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Jeff Guevin // Jan 25, 2010 at 21:48

  * not lon­gi­tu­di­nal.  Jeff Guevin(Quote)

  VN:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Sam Scott // Jan 26, 2010 at 00:05

  And, once again, YOU NEVER ANSWERED MY QUESTION!!! Let me repost it here: “How would you rem­edy the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion? If you had the abil­ity to deter­mine the pre­pon­der­ance of thought regard­ing gen­der rela­tions, how would you con­struct it? Would you remove people’s inhi­bi­tions regard­ing income and edu­ca­tion dis­par­ity, or would you return to a sit­u­a­tion in which men have higher income and edu­ca­tion, and that’s how it was? Either way would seem to cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion of sat­is­fac­tion and hap­pi­ness in both gen­ders, correct?”

  If I had a magic wand, I would remove people’s inhi­bi­tions. But since we have to live in the real world, I know that is not pos­si­ble. So I would sup­port the lat­ter.  Sam Scott(Quote)

  VN:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Dan // Jan 26, 2010 at 07:58

  Um, I hate to break it to you, but we are never — NEVER — going to go back to a time when men worked and women stayed home. Women have worked for cen­turies to make social and polit­i­cal progress, to get to the point that they can make deci­sions regard­ing their lives and careers just like men. To expect them to give up these hard-earned gains is unre­al­is­tic. You may as well ask them to give up their suffrage.

  From the above selec­tion, there was an impor­tant quote, “A sea change in rela­tion­ships is tak­ing place as every­one adjusts to the new real­ity of women being bet­ter edu­cated and in some cases more pre­ferred than men in the work­force.” A sea change is def­i­nitely tak­ing place. These broad, sweep­ing socioe­co­nomic changes are chal­leng­ing, upset­ting, and time-consuming. This will not be fixed overnight. People’s feel­ings and rou­tines will not be changed in a day, week, month, or year. They may not change in a decade. They may even take a cen­tury. But they WILL change.

  Here is a sim­i­lar exam­ple. Until the early nine­teenth cen­tury, most peo­ple in the US viewed slav­ery as nat­ural and inevitable. “It’s the way we’ve always done things! It’s the nat­ural way of the world! Whites are bio­log­i­cally selected to be intel­lec­tual mas­ters, while blacks are bio­log­i­cally selected to be man­ual labor­ers!” Even­tu­ally, some blacks and whites began to ques­tion this assump­tion. Over the course of decades, more and more peo­ple began to doubt the premise. Even­tu­ally, a rad­i­cal sea change took place — the Civil War and Recon­struc­tion — and sud­denly, blacks had many rights and priv­i­leges (legally at least) they never pre­vi­ously pos­sessed. Like, for exam­ple, the right to deter­mine their own careers.

  How­ever, the old atti­tude died hard. It took another cen­tury — cen­tury! — for the Supreme Court to finally begin to strike down Jim Crow laws, which were vir­tu­ally slav­ery in another form. Even today, many peo­ple in the US con­sider whites inher­ently supe­rior to blacks, and, in fact, many blacks con­sider them­selves infe­rior to whites. Some­day, though, peo­ple of all races will no longer see color as a bar­rier to any aspect of life, and at that time, we will all be truly free.

  This will hap­pen with gen­der rela­tions as well. Women will become more and more inde­pen­dent socioe­co­nom­i­cally; some men and women will not like this change, and resist it; more and more peo­ple will begin to sup­port the women’s right to be inde­pen­dent and to have full self-determination; and, even­tu­ally, the sea change will have taken place. Some­day, peo­ple of all gen­ders will no longer con­sider gen­der a bar­rier to any aspect of life. Then, and only then, will women and men be truly free to pur­sue one of their most fun­da­men­tal human rights: the right of self-determination.  Dan(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Mike // Jan 26, 2010 at 15:27

  “Fact: There is an increas­ing trend of sin­gle, child­less women in thir­ties who do not want to be sin­gle and childless.”

  I am eagerly await­ing the data sup­port­ing this. I would also accept replac­ing the word “fact” with “my per­cep­tion” if the data does not, in fact, exist.  Mike(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Sam Scott // Jan 27, 2010 at 04:45

  Every­one, here is some data and anec­dotes span­ning dif­fer­ent countries:

  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/single-minded-i-want-your-baby-but-not-you-479042.html

  About 82,000 sin­gle thir­tysome­thing women a year have a baby with­out a part­ner on the scene, almost dou­ble the num­ber of a decade ago. And many of them wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “The typ­i­cal sin­gle women who come to us,” says spe­cial­ist fer­til­ity nurse Helen Kendrew, “are the women who have had a career and have had every­thing sorted and now realise that they want to have a baby.

  “In their twen­ties women tend to put careers first and imag­ine that hus­bands and fam­i­lies are going to fall into line at some point. They’ve got their whole life laid out before them, but when they get to their thir­ties and for­ties and it hasn’t quite worked out like that, it can be a hell of a shock.”

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3991981.stm

  The rise of the sin­gle house­hold has esca­lated in the last decade, with the per­cent­age of sin­gle house­holds tre­bling since the 1970s and dou­bling again since the mid-80s.

  http://nymag.com/nymetro/nightlife/singles/features/2394/#ixzz0dmCs5e6t

  Women in their thir­ties have cooled on the dat­ing scene. Thirty-three per­cent are not cur­rently dat­ing, and 29 per­cent don’t want to get mar­ried. One in five hasn’t had sex in over a year. One in ten women respon­dents in their thir­ties claimed to be panic-stricken about their prospects, com­pared with 3 per­cent of men in their thirties.

  http://www.gender.go.jp/english_contents/women2001/s1.html

  Look­ing at trends in the per­cent­age of sin­gle peo­ple reveals that the per­cent­age of sin­gle women in their late twen­ties rose from 20.9% in 1975 to 48.0% in 1995. The per­cent­age of sin­gle women in their early thir­ties rose from 7.7% in 1975 to 19.7% in 1995 and that of sin­gle women in their late thir­ties from 5.3% to 10.0% dur­ing the same period, reveal­ing that even in the late thir­ties, the per­cent­age of sin­gle women is increasing.

  http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007–10/09/content_6158780.htm

  Find­ings indi­cated that 300,000 Guangzhou women, above the age of 30, are sin­gle, while sin­gle men only num­ber 200,000.

  In China, it is com­mon for peo­ple to marry before 30.

  Guan Xiu­fang, a researcher of Guang­dong Acad­emy of Social Sci­ences, said it was more dif­fi­cult for sin­gle women over 30 to find a spouse than it was for men of the same age group.

  “This prob­lem emerged as early as the begin­ning of 1980s, but the rea­sons have been dif­fer­ent in dif­fer­ent peri­ods,” Guan said.

  In 1970s and 1980s, many young urban peo­ple had to go work in the coun­try­side or moun­tain areas because of the Cul­tural Revolution.

  “Many women did not want to get mar­ried and set­tle down in rural places. There­fore, they remained sin­gle into their thir­ties,” Guan said.

  Per­haps today women hold­ing off on get­ting mar­ried, because they are being more selec­tive about their poten­tial partners.

  “They are too picky or too busy to find ideal spouses when they are of a nor­mal mar­ry­ing age,” Luo Tingt­ing, a woman work­ing for a mar­riage match­ing com­pany, said.

  “Then, when they are old they are not as ‘com­pet­i­tive’ as the younger women.” She said most men who have the qual­i­ties women pre­fer would rather marry girls who are young and pretty, not older ones.  Sam Scott(Quote)

  VN:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

  Reply

• Sam Scott // Jan 27, 2010 at 14:50

  And:

  Women lose 90% of eggs by 30

  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7079641/Women-lose-90-per-cent-of-eggs-by-30.html  Sam Scott(Quote)

  VN:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Sam Scott // Jan 27, 2010 at 16:25

  Dan,

  Um, I hate to break it to you, but we are never — NEVER — going to go back to a time when men worked and women stayed home. Women have worked for cen­turies to make social and polit­i­cal progress, to get to the point that they can make deci­sions regard­ing their lives and careers just like men. To expect them to give up these hard-earned gains is unre­al­is­tic. You may as well ask them to give up their suffrage.

  I fore­see one of two things hap­pen­ing in the medium– or long-term future:

  1. An increas­ing back­lash against fem­i­nism — both by men who resent an anti-male soci­ety and by women who will real­ize, far too late, that they made choices that did not make them happy in the end.

  2. West­ern soci­ety becomes increas­ingly a matri­archy that sup­ports — or at least tol­er­ates — anti-male sen­ti­ment. Women will con­tinue to sur­pass men in edu­ca­tion and employ­ment at greater and greater rates. And then the foun­da­tion of soci­ety will crum­ble.  Sam Scott(Quote)

  VN:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

  Reply

• Sam Scott // Jan 27, 2010 at 16:31

  Dan,

  Here is a sim­i­lar exam­ple. Until the early nine­teenth cen­tury, most peo­ple in the US viewed slav­ery as nat­ural and inevitable. “It’s the way we’ve always done things! It’s the nat­ural way of the world! Whites are bio­log­i­cally selected to be intel­lec­tual mas­ters, while blacks are bio­log­i­cally selected to be man­ual laborers!”

  Your metaphor is not accu­rate. Slav­ery was a result of social Dar­win­ism (which was proved to be a crock), racism, eco­nomic con­di­tions, and colo­nial­ism. It was not a prod­uct of the inher­ent, innate instincts, moti­va­tions, and desires that men and women pos­sess fol­low­ing untold thou­sands of years of evo­lu­tion­ary psychology.

  Slav­ery was not a func­tion of what occurs in our bod­ies; the way that men and women gen­er­ally behave in the dat­ing world is a result of these inner behav­iors — as sci­ence con­tin­u­ally proves.  Sam Scott(Quote)

  VN:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Dan // Jan 27, 2010 at 20:47

  1. An increas­ing back­lash against fem­i­nism — both by men who resent an anti-male soci­ety and by women who will real­ize, far too late, that they made choices that did not make them happy in the end.

  I’ll buy that. To con­tinue my ear­lier anal­ogy, there was incred­i­ble resent­ment in the South against the new rights of for­mer slaves as forcibly enacted by Recon­struc­tion. Insti­tu­tions such as Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan were formed in order to pre­serve the old order of things. Even­tu­ally, the Jim Crow laws were over­turned, but the Ku Klux Klan lingers on. They speak to peo­ple who feel vic­tim­ized by the new order of things, and those who have not adapted to the new real­ity. And, like peo­ple through­out his­tory who have felt threat­ened, they lashed out with vio­lence. I hope that your (pos­si­ble) pre­dicted back­lash does not turn vio­lent against women.

  2. West­ern soci­ety becomes increas­ingly a matri­archy that sup­ports — or at least tol­er­ates — anti-male sen­ti­ment. Women will con­tinue to sur­pass men in edu­ca­tion and employ­ment at greater and greater rates. And then the foun­da­tion of soci­ety will crumble.

  Why will the foun­da­tion of soci­ety crum­ble? It will change, cer­tainly, but crumble?

  3. Slav­ery was a result of social Dar­win­ism (which was proved to be a crock), racism, eco­nomic con­di­tions, and colo­nial­ism. It was not a prod­uct of the inher­ent, innate instincts, moti­va­tions, and desires that men and women pos­sess fol­low­ing untold thou­sands of years of evo­lu­tion­ary psychology.

  Slav­ery has existed since the begin­ning of mankind. Dur­ing that time, mem­bers of vir­tu­ally every soci­ety (Egypt­ian, Hebrew, Baby­lon­ian, Greek, Roman, Viking, Arab, Euro­pean, and Amer­i­can) have enslaved mem­bers of other soci­eties (and some­times of their own soci­eties). Many times the causes were eco­nomic; other times were polit­i­cal, social, legal, or other rea­sons. In gen­eral, though, slav­ery was uti­lized as a power struc­ture intended to main­tain the author­ity of one group of peo­ple over another. I would put for­ward that since slav­ery has existed for all of recorded his­tory, a slav­ery men­tal­ity must indeed be a prod­uct of thou­sands of years of evo­lu­tion­ary psychology.

  And this makes per­fect sense. Bio­log­i­cally speak­ing, it is log­i­cal that if you could take advan­tage of the man­ual labor of another, it would save you from hav­ing to do the work your­self. It also has the advan­tage of repress­ing com­pe­ti­tion from the mar­ket­place, as it pre­vents entire swaths of soci­ety from com­pet­ing freely against you.

  So why was slav­ery even­tu­ally made ille­gal? BECAUSE BIOLOGY DOES NOT DETERMINE THE RIGHTS OF MANKIND. There are such things as uni­ver­sal human rights. “Life, lib­erty, and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness.” (US Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence) “All human beings are born free and equal in dig­nity and rights.” (UN Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights) “Do unto oth­ers as you would have them do unto you.” (the Golden Rule) Do you see what is NOT men­tioned in any of these state­ments of human rights? Biol­ogy. Because the social con­tract that is the foun­da­tion of all mod­ern soci­ety requires a higher stan­dard of behav­ior that would be expected biologically.

  Here is another quote, this time from the Pre­am­ble to the UN Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights. “Whereas recog­ni­tion of the inher­ent dig­nity and of the equal and inalien­able rights of all mem­bers of the human fam­ily is the foun­da­tion of free­dom, jus­tice and peace in the world, [and] Whereas dis­re­gard and con­tempt for human rights have resulted in bar­barous acts which have out­raged the con­science of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy free­dom of speech and belief and free­dom from fear and want has been pro­claimed as the high­est aspi­ra­tion of the com­mon people…”

  Both of these clauses address the need to state, once and for all, that all peo­ple every­where have broad, sweep­ing rights in order to pre­serve free­dom, jus­tice, and peace. In addi­tion, the sec­ond clause uti­lizes the phrase “…the advent of a world…” This indi­cates that the authors of the Dec­la­ra­tion under­stood that these rights may indi­cate a sea change it what is expected as far as human rights go.

  Where am I going with this? We are stand­ing at the gate enter­ing into a new world of gen­der rela­tions, one vir­tu­ally unprece­dented in the his­tory of mankind. With time, women and men will be fully free to pur­sue their rights unen­cum­bered by bio­log­i­cal his­tory, ensured by the ever-changing and adapt­ing social con­tract ensur­ing that very free­dom. All peo­ple, of all types, will be free to pur­sue their inter­ests, be they tra­di­tional or non-traditional. This includes the right of women to work, acquire an edu­ca­tion, or have a fam­ily, or ALL THREE if they so desire. Men will have the right to work, acquire an edu­ca­tion, or have a fam­ily, or ALL THREE if THEY so desire.

  In the com­ing decades and cen­turies, those who would today hold back rights and free­doms from women will be viewed in the same light we view those who wished to hold back rights and free­doms from blacks. We will one day won­der what all the con­tro­versy was about, once soci­ety changes to reflect the new real­ity of true free­dom for all.

  I, for one, can­not wait for this change. I look for­ward to the day when basic human rights are assured for all, and all repres­sive restric­tions against var­i­ous groups, includ­ing women, have been swept away in the ris­ing tide of free­dom.  Dan(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Sam Scott // Jan 27, 2010 at 21:21

  Dan, you still think that I advo­cate the restric­tion of wom­ens’ civil lib­er­ties. I do not.

  Every­one should be free to make own choices. A woman should be free to do what­ever she wants, even if those choices end up hurt­ing her­self and soci­ety in the long run.

  And you still have not addressed my ques­tion after I cited many facts: Why do YOU think thir­tysome­thing women are increas­ingly sin­gle and child­less even though they do not want to be?  Sam Scott(Quote)

  VN:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Sam Scott // Jan 27, 2010 at 21:27

  Dan,

  Why will the foun­da­tion of soci­ety crum­ble? It will change, cer­tainly, but crumble?

  The human race is depen­dent upon women hav­ing and rais­ing good sons and daugh­ters. The world does not need more CEOs and cubicle-dwellers; the world needs more good moth­ers. It is the most impor­tant job a woman will ever have.

  When I lived in Boston, a bunch of my Israeli friends there worked as nan­nies. The fam­i­lies con­sisted of a father who worked all the time and a mother who wanted to be a “career woman.” Guess who raised the chil­dren? The nan­nies. That’s hor­ri­ble.  Sam Scott(Quote)

  VN:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

  Reply

• Dan // Jan 27, 2010 at 22:41

  “Why do YOU think thir­tysome­thing women are increas­ingly sin­gle and child­less even though they do not want to be?”

  Because they either 1) are not very good at mak­ing deci­sions, or 2) did not plan ahead. At all stages of your life, it is impor­tant to eval­u­ate where you are and where you would like to be in the near-, medium-, and long-term. To do so requires a large amount of self-analysis. Most peo­ple, I have found, are not par­tic­u­larly good at this. There­fore, they wan­der through life with­out a clear sense of direction.

  When I was in col­lege and con­sid­er­ing majors, I spent a lot of time think­ing about what my life goals were. I actu­ally wrote down a list, thought about it, revised it, thought about it some more, and even­tu­ally final­ized it. I real­ized that my sin­gle most impor­tant goal in life was to even­tu­ally become a father. I was 20 years old at the time. I CERTAINLY did not want to be a father right then — good god, that would have been a dis­as­ter. But I thought about where my life might lead me in the future, and father­hood is some­thing I wanted to accom­plish. There­fore, I designed my course of study around a career that would allow me to be the best father I could be. In other words, I first con­structed an over­hang­ing super­struc­ture of goals to achieve; I then went back and filled in all the var­i­ous sup­ports needed to achieve those goals. I started with a future plan, and worked back­ward to the present time to achieve that plan.

  I would ven­ture to say, with­out any evi­dence besides my own expe­ri­ences with oth­ers, that most peo­ple do not plan ahead that far. My guess would be that most of the women that are increas­ingly sin­gle and child­less and do not want to be did not plan far enough in advance to achieve these goals. It takes time, effort, and com­mit­ment to achieve a last­ing rela­tion­ship. It takes even longer (the­o­ret­i­cally) to have chil­dren. This is not a 1 month or 1 year plan. This is more likely to be a 5 year plan. They prob­a­bly didn’t plan enough ahead to achieve their goals, and now they are suf­fer­ing for their poor plan­ning.  Dan(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: -1 (from 1 vote)

  Reply

• Dan // Jan 27, 2010 at 22:42

  “Every­one should be free to make own choices. A woman should be free to do what­ever she wants, even if those choices end up hurt­ing her­self and soci­ety in the long run.”

  I am in full agree­ment with this one. Not that I think it will hurt soci­ety in the long run, but that women have the right to do so if they so desire.  Dan(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Sam Scott // Jan 27, 2010 at 22:46

  Dan, the issues you describe have always existed. But why are sin­gle, child­less women in their thir­ties who do not want to be more preva­lent NOW than in the past?  Sam Scott(Quote)

  VN:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Mike // Jan 27, 2010 at 22:46

  Sam — your links do not really sup­port the “Fact: There is an increas­ing trend of sin­gle, child­less women in thir­ties who do not want to be sin­gle and childless.”

  #1 pretty clearly states that there is a num­ber of women that want to be sin­gle, but not child­less, and have found a way to achieve that.

  #2 talks about sin­gle men

  #3 is a sur­vey on the sex lives of New Yorkers

  #4 talks about Japan, which is pretty far East and has some very odd demo­graphic issues in gen­eral. Noth­ing is men­tioned about women who want to be mar­ried and have kids. It is a jump to make that claim based on a sta­tis­tic about peo­ple get­ting mar­ried at an older age than a few years ago.

  #5 China? I guess it is the clos­est thing to sup­port­ing your the­ory, but China?

  For some­thing that has been pre­sented as such a con­crete fact, I would have expected more applic­a­ble sto­ries. I guess I am still think­ing this is more a per­cep­tion.  Mike(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Dan // Jan 27, 2010 at 22:47

  “The human race is depen­dent upon women hav­ing and rais­ing good sons and daughters.”

  Wrong. The human race is depen­dent upon MEN AND WOMEN hav­ing and rais­ing good sons and daugh­ters. The duty of par­ent­hood is equally applied to both men and women, and the men who see it as a woman’s respon­si­bil­ity are self­ish, vile crea­tures. Why is it solely a woman’s respon­si­bil­ity? That’s shirk­ing one’s duty as a man to not step up and help out with rais­ing your children.

  “The world does not need more CEOs and cubicle-dwellers; the world needs more good moth­ers. It is the most impor­tant job a woman will ever have.”

  Wrong again! The world needs more good MOTHERS AND FATHERS. It is the most impor­tant job a WOMAN AND A MAN will ever have. The most impor­tant duty of a gen­er­a­tion is to leave the world a bet­ter place for their chil­dren. This requires the full par­tic­i­pa­tion and accept­ing of respon­si­bil­ity of men and women in rais­ing their children.

  “When I lived in Boston, a bunch of my Israeli friends there worked as nan­nies. The fam­i­lies con­sisted of a father who worked all the time and a mother who wanted to be a “career woman.” Guess who raised the chil­dren? The nan­nies. That’s horrible.”

  I agree. I think I have made it clear that par­ent­ing is just about the most impor­tant job in the world. As long as you are will­ing to accept the fact that it is the fail­ure of the father as well as the mother in leav­ing their chil­dren to be raised by nan­nies, I will agree with this point.  Dan(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: +1 (from 3 votes)

  Reply

• Sam Scott // Jan 27, 2010 at 22:53

  Dan, my offer still stands:

  If you, Jen, Mike, or Jeff would want to write a lengthy, point-by-point response to my essay incor­po­rat­ing all my ideas, I’d fea­ture it in its own post. Bal­anced report­ing, and all.

  http://www.samueljscott.com/2007/10/05/the-battle-of-the-sexes/  Sam Scott(Quote)

  VN:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Sam Scott // Jan 27, 2010 at 23:19

  Mike,

  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3657264/The-rise-and-rise-of-the-single-woman.…html

  What is clear though is that women are wait­ing longer before they make that step. In the early Sev­en­ties, 85 per cent of women were mar­ried by the time they were 30, now, fewer that one woman in three is mar­ried by that age.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMfEDTXUnbQ

  Doc­u­men­tary film about sin­gle women no longer wait­ing for mr. right to have a baby. The trend is bal­loon­ing among women in their mid thir­ties to mid forties.

  http://love.ivillage.com/snd/sndcouplehood/0„7rvj7n9q-p,00.html

  The pop­u­la­tion bub­ble of sin­gle women from their mid-thirties through their early fifties is one major fac­tor pro­pelling the rekindled-love phe­nom­e­non [of reunit­ing with past loves]. I have at least a dozen girl­friends who would be fan­tas­tic catches for the right guy, but these women are still wait­ing. They have tried blind dates, sin­gles events, setups by friends, wine-tasting classes, flash dat­ing, bowl­ing leagues, golf lessons and church mix­ers. They have dat­ing fatigue ‑- they are weary of con­tin­u­ally start­ing over, try­ing to impress new peo­ple, look­ing for love. They’re ready to find it.

  This group includes women who have put their per­sonal lives on hold to work full blast at a career. Some have had a long rela­tion­ship or two ‑- even one they thought would lead to mar­riage, until it didn’t. Oth­ers mar­ried Mr. Wrong and ended up divorced. These ter­rific women want to set­tle down, but they can’t find partners.

  http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/why-are-we-single-finding-a-new-partner-can-be-much-harder-for-a-woman-than-a-man-linda-grant-reports-1509849.html

  The sta­tis­tics are pretty bru­tal. Although there are more sin­gle (divorced, wid­owed or never mar­ried) men than sin­gle women (of all ages apart from the late for­ties), there are more women than men over­all, a gap which increases in the older age groups. The older women get, the less are their chances of remar­ry­ing. As long as Andrew con­tin­ues to look for women younger than him­self, he will find plenty of poten­tial part­ners, for there are more avail­able women in their twen­ties, than there are unat­tached men in their thirties.

  If Paula con­tin­ues to insist on an older man she may look in vain. Accord­ing to the 1991 cen­sus, there were 390,000 unat­tached women aged 40 to 44 in Britain and only 228,000 men between 45 and 49 (in part because there were fewer births dur­ing the war). A 40-year-old man who wants a girl­friend between 30 and 34 will have a pool of 573,000 avail­able women. A 40-year-old woman try­ing to find a part­ner between 45 and 49 will only have 228,000 men to drawn on.

  http://nymag.com/nymetro/nightlife/singles/features/2394/#ixzz0dqkXFQDt

  Women in their thir­ties have cooled on the dat­ing scene. Thirty-three per­cent are not cur­rently dat­ing, and 29 per­cent don’t want to get mar­ried. One in five hasn’t had sex in over a year. One in ten women respon­dents in their thir­ties claimed to be panic-stricken about their prospects, com­pared with 3 per­cent of men in their thirties…

  The dropout rate goes up with age: 33 per­cent of women respon­dents in their thir­ties said they’re not dat­ing, and 9 per­cent admit­ted to pan­ick­ing.  Sam Scott(Quote)

  VN:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Sam Scott // Jan 27, 2010 at 23:21

  Mike, the rea­son I included arti­cles from other coun­tries is to prove that human nature is the same through­out the world: the more suc­cess­ful and edu­cated a woman, the more likely it is that she will have a harder time get­ting mar­ried and remain sin­gle into her thir­ties or later.  Sam Scott(Quote)

  VN:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Dan // Jan 28, 2010 at 01:24

  “Dan, the issues you describe have always existed. But why are sin­gle, child­less women in their thir­ties who do not want to be more preva­lent NOW than in the past? ”

  Because more women today have the option of choos­ing a career first than ever before. This addi­tional option has led this group of women to plan their lives poorly. For that, they are unhappy.

  I would apply the reverse ques­tion here as well. Back in, say, the 1950’s, when it was expected that men would work full-time and women would run the house­hold full-time, how many women were home­mak­ers that did not want to be? They were forced into stay­ing home, and were there­fore unhappy. At least the women of today have the FREEDOM to choose what they want to do. If they choose poorly, that’s their fault for doing so.

  Before, many women were mis­er­able because they had no other options. Today, many women are mis­er­able because they selected the wrong option. This is still progress, because there is greater free­dom than ever before.  Dan(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

  Reply

• Jen // Jan 28, 2010 at 03:34

  The fact that women have options is a BIG deal. To answer Dan’s “reverse ques­tion”… the 1950s and 1960s saw a dra­matic increase in the use of tran­quil­iz­ers and Val­ium. As writ­ten in the Fem­i­nine Mystique:

  “Thus ter­ri­ble tired­ness took so many women to doc­tors in the 1950’s that one decided to inves­ti­gate it. He found, sur­pris­ingly, that his patients suf­fer­ing from “housewife’s fatigue’ slept more than an adult needed to sleep –as much as ten hours a day– and that the actual energy they expended on house­work did not tax their capac­ity. The real prob­lem must be some­thing else, he decided-perhaps bore­dom. Some doc­tors told their women patients they must get out of the house for a day, treat them­selves to a movie in town. Oth­ers pre­scribed tran­quil­iz­ers. Many sub­ur­ban house­wives were tak­ing tran­quil­iz­ers like cough drops. You wake up in the morn­ing, and you feel as if there’s no point in going on another day like this. So you take a tran­quil­izer because it makes you not care so much that it’s pointless.”

  So who is to say that being 40, sin­gle, and want­ing a baby is worse than what some felt in the 1950s mar­ried?  Jen(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Jeff // Jan 28, 2010 at 03:40

  Sam, I can’t do a point-by-point refu­ta­tion of your claims because:

  1) you still haven’t shown any sta­tis­tics. That is, real sta­tis­tics from real sources. Ran­dom sur­veys con­ducted by lib­eral British news­pa­pers aren’t going to do it.

  2) the very few “sta­tis­tics” you present can be taken any num­ber of ways, most of which are not the spin you and your beloved authors cite.

  3) you’re argu­ing from what seems to be an ide­o­log­i­cal stand­point, as indis­cernible as it might be to the rest of us.

  4) I don’t care enough; I think you’re wrong; Dan & Mike have already expended far more energy on con­tra­dict­ing you than I have; and, I think that the more you defend your posi­tion, the deeper the hole you’re dig­ging, which might just hurt you in your quest for the per­fect wife.  Jeff(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

  Reply

• Mike // Jan 28, 2010 at 16:42

  Sam — I will cer­tainly agree that there are going to be women out there that chose a career and decided a bit too late that they may have been hap­pier get­ting mar­ried young and hav­ing a fam­ily. There are also going to be a num­ber of women out there who are unhap­pily mar­ried with kids who wish they would have taken a dif­fer­ent path. Peo­ple make the wrong deci­sions all the time and have regrets about choices they make.

  But again — who cares? This isn’t some sort of cri­sis. The sur­veys you found only con­firm that there are peo­ple out there that aren’t mar­ried and in their 30’s, and some who really do want to be mar­ried, and maybe even some who want kids. But I still don’t see the hard evi­dence to sup­port the “Fact: There is an increas­ing trend of sin­gle, child­less women in thir­ties who do not want to be sin­gle and childless.”

  Sin­gle child­less women who want to be mar­ried and have kids have always existed. Now, per­haps the demo­graph­ics of this set of women has changed and it is now includ­ing smart, intel­li­gent, attrac­tive women that have jobs who 50 years ago might have been swept up by some guy early on and made into a house­wife. Maybe more tra­di­tion­ally less desire­able women are mak­ing it into mar­riage instead to replace those putting it off. In the past they may have been lonely and child­less in their 30s.

  Any­way, I am get­ting tired of this dis­cus­sion. It seems as though you claimed some­thing to be a fact before you actu­ally had any data to sup­port it, and only came up with some loosely related sur­veys and stud­ies to sup­port that “fact” after being asked about it. I could prob­a­bly google up a dozen stud­ies to sup­port all sorts of facts if I really wanted to.

  I would much rather dis­cuss this sort of thing when it is cor­rectly pre­sented as a per­cep­tion, or opin­ion of some sort. Even a few anec­dotes of some sort to start the dis­cus­sion instead of forc­ing things to be facts that really aren’t.  Mike(Quote)

  VA:F [1.9.3_1094]

  Rating: -1 (from 3 votes)

  Reply