There is nothing new except what has been forgotten. – Marie Antoinette
The highest divorce rates in the world are in economically and industrially developed regions; since the primary socioeconomic rationale for marriage has always been support and protection of women and children, obviously a woman whose sole source of support was her husband’s income did not have the option to leave him if she became dissatisfied, because her need to survive outweighed all other considerations. Indeed, it can be shown that in most periods of history, women with their own sources of income (heiresses, tradeswomen and whores) divorced at much higher rates than poor women did; they had no economic incentive to remain in marriages with which they were unhappy. This has been noted before and analyzed to great exhaustion, but taken alone it fails to point to the true reason for the high modern divorce rate.
In preindustrial times the family was the basic unit of government; even the king was a sort of father over the extended family of his kingdom, which at the earliest times actually was his extended family. The title “sire” clearly reflects back upon this role of his. Each family’s economy contributed via taxes and levies to the economy of the local noble and to the king, who thus derived their upkeep from taxes just as modern governments do. More recently, however, the size of the population, the increased preeminence of ideology over personality, and the unifying and organizing ability made possible by modern means of transportation and communication have combined to result in the depersonalization of power. Power has been removed from the hands of individual rulers and spread out over entire organizations, and even though there are powerful personalities within each organization, the power ultimately rests in the organization itself rather than in any individual. A political party or other power-holding organization is itself an organic entity, a superhuman “being” deriving power from its myriad members like Hobbes’ Leviathan, but as an inhuman entity it has motivations different from those of a human. Our ancestors were ruled by human men with the desires and needs of human men, while we are ruled by inhuman collectives with their own needs and desires. Both types of rulers have one thing in common, however; they both desire power above all else, and will do anything necessary to acquire and retain that power.
Female sexuality is perhaps the most powerful social force known; what men will do for the privilege of sexual contact with a sexually attractive woman is nothing short of incredible, and what women will do to satisfy their sense of intimacy is only slightly less so (I use the term “sense of intimacy” because in most women this impulse is more complex than that of men and may encompass children, sexless physical intimacy, spiritual devotion to a cherished belief system, etc). In the past a poor or low-born woman might raise her status through her sexuality, either by conventional whoring or by long-term arrangements such as becoming the concubine or kept woman of a wealthy man. And because both individual men and governments cannot help but recognize this, control of female sexuality has always been an important factor in the control of a society as a whole, usually with repressive results for women.
As if female sexuality alone were not powerful enough, consider the formerly-inevitable consequences of that sexuality; female control of child-rearing and the earliest socialization of children is another source of enormous power. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, and because both religions and modern totalitarian states recognize this they have both worked diligently to usurp the control of such socialization from women. It must also be recognized that in every society in history (with rare exception) adult women have outnumbered adult men by a significant margin, so any entity, whether human or collective, which is to hold power for very long must control women, whether overtly or covertly, via repression or via conciliation. The critical error made by neofeminists in their constant prattle about the “Patriarchy” is their assumption that the mechanisms of power and control are consciously created and maintained by men and for men, which is a fallacy. Institutions are inherently sexless; they can be made up of men, women, machines or any combination thereof without making any difference in their motivations or behavior. All organizations, no matter what their constituency, wish to survive and grow, and will obtain that end by any means necessary; since the most powerful social forces emanate from women it is women who must be controlled in order to control society, even if those in power are mostly female.
Most people are confused about why modern marriages fail because they misunderstand what marriage really is in the first place. Once this is understood, it becomes obvious that the institution is alive and well; it has merely changed into a form most people fail to recognize. Contrary to what most modern people like to believe, marriage is and always has been primarily a socioeconomic arrangement; the most basic motivation for any woman is the acquisition and retention of security for herself and her children, and only after that basic need is met can she pursue any higher motivations. In the past, a woman married in order that she and her children would be provided for and protected, and love or sexual passion had little or nothing to do with these considerations. Historically, marriage was almost never for love; it was a social arrangement designed to ensure that women and children were protected and provided for. Men who could support and protect a larger number of women and children married more women and fathered more children, and the arrangement worked; the woman was guaranteed security for herself and her children, and the man was guaranteed as much sexual variety as he could afford. Women (or their parents) sought out whichever man they felt could best provide for them: They “married up” whenever possible. Men who were less able to provide got the less desirable women, and women who either could not or did not wish to marry still could gain male support via some form of whoring; only those with no prospects whatsoever and a psychological aversion to any form of harlotry attempted to subsist on the meager wages available to women through “honest” work.
It must not be imagined, however, that love as we know it is a modern invention; it merely had nothing to do with marriage. A look at the love stories of ancient and medieval times (and even many modern ones), in which the female character was often married (or in modern “romantic comedies”, at least claimed) and the male almost never was, supports this. In other words, once a woman’s basic needs were met by marriage, she was then psychologically free to pursue her higher needs for love and intimacy, whether inside or outside of her marriage. In some societies this situation was more or less acknowledged or else actively ignored by the men; in others the woman had to go to considerable lengths to disguise the affair, with dire consequences if she was discovered. Even in societies like that of the Arabs, where the men in power took great pains to ensure the fidelity of their wives, the poor-but-interesting men were more than happy to assist those wives who wished to engage in extramarital liaisons, and because of the need for secrecy the husbands saved face. Even in situations like this everyone could profit: The husband got the social prominence deriving from a large family and access to as many women as he could afford; the wife got security from her husband and intimacy from either him or her lovers, as she desired; the children got security and an illustrious name, and the lover got the sexual favors of a woman to whom he would otherwise have been denied access.
It is probably safe to assume that the vast majority of these affairs between married women and unmarried men were more or less short-lived; eventually the risk would outweigh the reward for one or the other and the affair would be broken off. No matter how brief or varied extramarital contact was, however, marriages tended to endure because the commitment to maintaining security for herself and her children was always paramount. In other words, though a woman’s source of security must be stable and enduring, her source of sexual and emotional intimacy could and often did change over time. Then, as now, more women wanted to marry those with power (either political or economic) for the reasons already stated above, and those with power of course wanted to marry as many women as possible for both sexual and social reasons. More wives meant more power on every level, and this has not changed and probably never will. What has changed, however, is the nature of those in power.
For those with power are now inhuman entities, namely corporations and collectivist governments, and it is they whom many women now seek to marry. Because these entities are inhuman, their needs and desires are different from those of human men, but no less focused on women. The “wife” of a corporation provides some form of work rather than sex, and in return receives the sort of security once provided by husbands, namely income (even during pregnancy and old age), medical care, etc; a faithful “wife” is rewarded with higher pay and benefits. Similarly, a collectivist government has many “wives” which it attempt to support through social programs and attempts to protect through legislation. The fact that it does such a poor job of both only means that most women will seek to marry a better provider first; only those women with low standards and poor prospects “marry” governments. And although sex is not part of the reward for these institutions, they demand fidelity in their own fashions: The United States government stops supporting mothers who marry mere humans, and companies give their best positions and income to “career women” who give their all to the company rather than “cheating” with a family.
Once this parallel is recognized, the reason for the high divorce rate in industrially and economically modern nations is self-evident: The true “husbands” of most women in those countries (in other words, their security-providers) are the companies they work for or the governments whose social programs support them. Their relationships with those institutions, like the relationships of nuns with the Catholic Church, is a long-lasting and mutually beneficial one (nuns become “brides of Christ” and even wear wedding rings). Just as the wives of kings and nobles were actually supported by the taxes they levied on their subjects, so the “wives” of socialist governments are supported by taxes and the “wives” of companies by their profits. And just as the wives of polygamous kings often sought emotional intimacy with poor but interesting lovers, so modern women “married” to companies or governments often seek intimacy with mere human men who are poor but interesting when compared to their faceless and inhuman “husbands”. Like those extramarital relationships of the past, however, these “affairs” the “wives” of institutions have with human men are often short-lived and replaceable; lovers come and go, but the marriage endures. In other words, modern “marriages” are not the true successors to marriages of the past; they are instead the successors of what used to be called affairs, born of passion and the need for intimacy and usually transitory for that reason. The modern woman’s relationship with her employer, government, or organization, like that of nuns with the church, is the true equivalent of the traditional woman’s relationship with her husband, which may in part explain why those most devoted “wives” of industry and government, the neofeminists, attack their unfettered and independent whore sisters just as vociferously as the “respectable” married women of the past ever did.
The question then becomes, what is the next stage of evolution in terms of structure?
That depends on where our culture goes. If we keep moving toward collectivist totalitarianism or corporate fascism, women will eventually be reduced to chattel again, “wives” to the ruling power. Only by reining in the power of corporate conglomerates, dismantling the nanny state and abolishing all legislation which criminalizes consensual behavior or attempts to control the bodies, minds, property or choices of individuals (male or female) is there hope for a free future. As for man-woman relationships, many modern people seem unable to handle them; if this trend goes on Western culture will inevitably die off and be replaced by younger, more barbaric, less self-tortured and guilt-ridden cultures who fuck like bunnies and don’t give a damn about whom they oppress.
Modern people can’t handle them, I think, because their seems to be no clearly defined roles. People don’t know what to do anymore, and/or are too narcissistic to think that they need to change and grow to maintain a relationship.
A lot of people seem to think they just “deserve” a good relationship, that it should just be handed to them without work or sacrifice. It’s that good old American sense of entitlement, and I’m afraid it’ll get worse before it gets better.
This is… interesting. Not sure I buy it.
I’m not saying that you’re wrong; I don’t feel that I can be sure of that. But I’m not sure you’re right. Maybe you are in fact right about the whole thing, but personally, I’m starting to see Dr. Freud and his omnipresent phallus.
I tend to see the modern working woman, not as the successor to the traditional wife, but as the successor to the traditional whore. I do remember pointing out to a friend that every time a working Joe does something for his job that he wouldn’t do for free, he’s prostituting himself as surely as any working girl. If I go on, this will get too long. I’ll post more later.
Only the modern self-employed woman can be considered sister to the whore, because only she is her own boss, in control of her own life. A woman who is the handmaiden to a nation, corporation or organization (including the feminist movement itself), and follows its rules and obeys its dicta because she fears to lose her status and/or means of support, is no less chattel than any traditional wife.
Hey now, I don’t think I deserve that!
I promised to add more to this later and, being something of a slacker (I think I really am) it took me a while to get around to it.
How many prostitutes are self-employed? If you are a brothel girl, you work for the brothel. If a temple prostitute you work for the church (and likely the king; it was Gilgamesh who sent Shamhat to deal with the wild man). Everybody talks about streetwalkers and pimps, but I hear that pimps aren’t as common as they used to be. And call girls… Well, unless you own the agency, you’re working for whoever does.
For now, at least, I’m going to stand by the idea that the modern working girl is the sister to the old-time working girl.
The working Joe is joined by working Jo-Ann, and she’s getting her security and comfort from something else than marriage. She’s getting it from the same place men not born to wealth have always gotten it: the job. So marriage is no longer about that, because, like her husband, she can get that elsewhere. Now, marriage really is all about love and romance and taking care of the children and emotional support. If any of that is missing, she can leave, because material security doesn’t need marriage anymore.
Of course, we all know men who are “married to the job,” and I don’t doubt that there are “workaholic” women as well, but that’s a different thing altogether.
Most. The only ones who aren’t are brothel girls and streetwalkers with pimps (see below). All escorts are independent contractors; they work when they want for as long or short as they want, leave services which give them a poor deal, see only the clients they like, etc.
They were never as common as they used to be. What I mean by that is, the true pimp (you’ll see what I mean probably next week, when I do that column) is a modern phenomenon; he only appeared after the abolition (of prostitution) laws proliferated around the turn of the 20th century. And the National Task Force on Prostitution estimates that fewer than half of all streetwalkers ever had pimps even in the worst areas.
Nope. You’re an independent contractor; the service is the same as an actor’s agent. A girl who dislikes a service can just walk out, and can have another job with one phone call. Try that in corporate America.
You’re entitled to your opinion of course, but as someone who has done both I’m telling you that you’re wrong. Only female business owners have anything like the freedom of prostitutes, and most don’t even have that.
Exactly right, which is why it’s more like an old-time affair; it is born of passion, dies when the passion dies and (at least for the modern middle-class American woman) can be exited easily and without serious social or financial repurcussions.
You know more about it than I do, and it would be silly of me to pretend otherwise. For instance, I didn’t realize the independent contractor thing. I’d be almost willing to bet that most people don’t know that.
None of this makes you right or me wrong on this issue, but it does mean that your odds of being right are higher than mine. I will keep that in mind, if I have any sense.
I’m sure you’d win that bet; most people don’t even know the difference between a pimp and an escort service owner, and the US government pretends not to know the difference between an escort service and an organized crime cartel.
You deserve better than Dr. Freud’s phallus, because we all know how you feel about cocaine. Which, now that I think about it, explains a lot about Sigmund.
Well, I’m inclined to cut Freud more slack than most people these days; after all, he was trying to develop theories about the minds of all people from a sample entirely composed of neurotic, sexually-repressed upper middle class Viennese ladies of the late Victorian Era. That’s roughly equivalent to an alien visitor exploring most of Florida, then from that sole experience attempting to draw a map of the whole Earth.
Indeed, I always felt this was problematic — it’s akin to a big conspiracy theory. This doesn’t make much sense: it is difficult to imagine all men conspiring to do anything at all (they are too divided against each other for all kinds of rational and irrational reasons), no matter how advantageous it is for them — say, the oppression of women. Institutions and social patterns have origins and evolution paths that are much more complex than activists think (and which honestly no scientist, no theory can really model). Just as the Marxists were wrong in carving out ‘class warfare’ or ‘the bourgeoisie’ or ‘the capitalist’ or ‘the proletariat’ as the agents whose conflict would determine the outcome of history, “Patriarchy” theoreticians are wrong in creating theories of, say, ‘gender warfare’ (aka conspiracy-theory oppression); in both cases, these ‘academic’ explanations are similar to the folk explanations — ‘God subordinated woman to man in illo tempore — in that they are simply myths created by people who become aware and wonder about the social patterns they observe around themseves, rather than being the causes of said patterns.
Ah! I think I discern a certain anarchist bent in your prose! 🙂
I would put it in more general terms, Maggie. In the past, given the social structures of yore, indeed “husbands” were the security-providers of women; but in that, they are not different from men, who also had men (usually themselves) as security-providers. In other words: both sexes needed security, but for several reasons (biological, cultural, historical, etc.) men could be more directly involved in providing their own security while women needed men to do so. In these cases women were not acting any differently from men: they were simply operating as men would have if they were submitted to the same set of sociocultural/biological constraints.
So now that women’s security-provider is becoming the same as men’s security-provider, relations between men and women are no longer necessarily based on security needs, but on higher-level (Maslow scale) needs such as intimacy, passion, shared interests, or companionship. And, in my opinion, that is actually for the better.
Ah, but you forget the one advantage we have over Ancient Rome: modern science. If, as is arguably plausible, creating new human beings becomes fully possible without sex (by producing clones, with natural or artificial DNA, with Brave-New-World-like ‘Bokanovsky process’, or however it ends up being done), then society will no longer depend on the success rate of man-woman relationships in order to perpetuate itself: the power structures of the time (or perhaps, who knows, single individuals making their own choices) will be able to determine how many new people will be born, and perhaps even how they will be educated and brought into adulthood. It won’t matter whether or not men and women become better at building bonds and establishing relationships (though I would certainly hope they will improve their skills).
If this comes to pass, by the way, then, if one accepts your theoretical claim (“Female sexuality is perhaps the most powerful social force known […] female control of child-rearing and the earliest socialization of children is another source of enormous power.”), this would be a revolutionary moment in history. Because, suddenly, female sexuality would no longer be this nexus of power over male desire plus control of the next generation: the social importance of women would suddenly decrease to approximately the level of men’s, since the hand rocking the cradle and ruling the world would no longer be female. Now wouldn’t that be interesting? One wonders what could happen after that…
P.S.: Maggie, even though I disagree with some of the ideas you present here, I have to say this was one hell of a read. I’ve read number of interesting things this month, and this was one of the most interesting ones — it really made my head start spinning and thinking in all directions and sent me pacing all around the room. Wow! I love that. I feel like I should pay you a one-hour call fee. Thank you ma’am! 🙂
You’re very welcome! 🙂
Similarly, a collectivist government has many “wives” which it attempt to support through social programs and attempts to protect through legislation. The fact that it does such a poor job of both only means that most women will seek to marry a better provider first; only those women with low standards and poor prospects “marry” governments.
This resonates so strongly with me.
I’ve written this in professional (medical) forums this way:
Single Mom discards her biological FOB, in favor of Surrogate Husband. Surrogate Husband fills her handbag with WIC, earned income credit, section 8 housing, child care credit, food stamps, free and reduced lunches, free park district passes, Medicaid, SSI payments for her child’s ADHD, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
Large swaths of fathers/husbands/Dads are discarded in favor of Divorce Entitlements and Surrogate Husband.
Statistically it looks like this: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/entitlement-america-head-household-making-minimum-wage-has-more-disposable-income-family-mak
Why does this matter? because children fare dismal when raised by the unholy matrimony of Single Mom and Surrogate Husband……..as measured by high school graduation, teen pregnancies, drug use, etc.
By way of introduction, I am female, age 53, married 28 years. monogamous. I’m the archetype married woman you rail against here. I’ll assume it is out of jealousy, but whatever. I’ve been reading here for a few hours. This essay resonated with me, and had to agree strongly.
I think the weakening of male roles in our lives aloso explains why lots of women can not find their husbands sexy, and hence have affairs. It is impossible for a wife to find her husband sexy long-term when he brings less to the union than she does, and when he gradually becomes submissive to her. You’ve stated it here as “I can’t allow a man in me after I have dominated him.” I suspect many of your married patrons are submissive weakened men ; their wives can no longer see them as sexy.
I”d love to know of your thoughts.
Ouch, JZ! I really didn’t feel I was “railing” against married women in this essay; after all, I am happily married myself! And I promise, my annoyance with my married sisters isn’t due to jealousy but rather due to a sincere wish to help my readers of both sexes to strengthen their relationships via a deeper understanding of them and of the opposite sex.
My issue with most modern American women is that they have an unrealistic view of marriage and seem to believe that it’s all for them and nothing for the husband. I’ve actually read women on the internet professing that men are “perverts” for wanting more sex or more variety than their wives, for being attracted to young women, etc. I blame this distorted attitude on the neofeminist notion of “social construction of gender”, which teaches that all gender difference are taught and therefore implies that “society” could (and by implication, should) force males to think and behave like females…which would be a disaster. Here’s my column on that subject; I think you’ll see that we’re very much on the same wavelength about the damage done to modern relationships by the social castration of men.
Thanks for giving me so much of your time this afternoon; I hope more of it resonated with you than annoying you, and that you’ll share your thoughts with us often!
“I think the weakening of male roles in our lives also explains why lots of women can not find their husbands sexy, and hence have affairs. It is impossible for a wife to find her husband sexy long-term when he brings less to the union than she does, and when he gradually becomes submissive to her. You’ve stated it here as “I can’t allow a man in me after I have dominated him.” I suspect many of your married patrons are submissive weakened men ; their wives can no longer see them as sexy.”
“My issue with most modern American women is that they have an unrealistic view of marriage and seem to believe that it’s all for them and nothing for the husband. I’ve actually read women on the internet professing that men are “perverts” for wanting more sex or more variety than their wives, for being attracted to young women, etc. I think you’ll see that we’re very much on the same wavelength about the damage done to modern relationships by the social castration of men.”
Speaking as a man that frequents this blog and has profited greatly from Maggie’s wisdom, I wholeheartedly believe that a lack of comprehensive sex education is one of the cultural weaknesses that feeds this state of affairs. If I had known the things that I know now ten years ago, many things in my life would be different. If I had known that biology drives psychology, the differences between girls & women, stages of life, etc., a whole lot of down times could’ve been avoided.
I also must state that a lot of men no longer feel that they have a place in society, nor can we engage in activities that are “male only.” We HAVE to let the women in, or else risked being forced to legally, or shamed in the court of Oprah’s public opinion.
Finally, the misandry that is now prevalent in today’s media is beyond repugnant to me, yet every time I speak against it I get called a raging misogynist, just because I believe in strong men.
I think it’s absolutely vital that men have “man only” spaces, and women have “woman only” spaces, where they can relax, speak freely and not have to be on their guard or worry about causing offense. Many feminists will support the right of women to such spaces, but make excuses as to why men can’t…which is practically a definition for hypocrisy. 🙁
Agree that biology trumps feminism.
Agree that women can not teach/shame/persuade men what they should like.
got to go.
to expand on my comments of yesterday,
I’ve long understood the ghetto class women as a solid matriarchy, married to BigGov as a Surrogate Husband. Male/Female marriages here are rare. 70% of all AA babies are born to Single Moms. No Dads to model for the boys. Read this:
http://therawness.com/myth-of-the-ghetto-alpha-male/
You extend this to middle class women, almost all of us, when you marry us to our employers who provide us with income and health care. I’m still thinking on that.
At the tippy top of income levels, the men still earn more and are more patriarchial.
Humanscorch asked about the future. We’re already seeing that with drops in marriage rates, and the aging of first time marriage partners. Again, this morning I heard that divorce rates are dropping ,…….that’s because marriage rates are dropping.
Ah, I see now! I actually didn’t mean it as a judgmental thing, just recognizing that a woman with a source of income has no survival motive to stay in a marriage. A marriage based on love and not economics is much more like a traditional love affair than like a traditional marriage, which is why they’re often short-lived. But I don’t mean the comparison to be pejorative; I feel that if people have insight into why they feel the way they do it helps them to make rational decisions rather than emotional ones. For example, people who recognize that the feeling of being “in love” is biochemical are much less likely to conclude there is something wrong with their partners when that feeling fades. See what I mean?
I hear you Maggie, but it’s for those that *wish* to be enlightened. That’s not every soul that walks the globe.
I was just talking to my best guy friend on the phone…he’s 25 years old, and he just got married on Memorial Day weekend 2010, and he’s already thinking about a divorce, because he’s discovered that he married a girl & not a woman, and he feels more like a parent than a husband. Plus she doesn’t turn him on sexually.
*Sigh* We need mandatory education in this country.
@HumanScorch, you stated,
Finally, the misandry that is now prevalent in today’s media is beyond repugnant to me, yet every time I speak against it I get called a raging misogynist, just because I believe in strong men.
The most attractive men, to women, are those who can cut through all that shaming to behave in an unapologetic masculinity.
“The most attractive men, to women, are those who can cut through all that shaming to behave in an unapologetic masculinity.”
Funny you should say that….my catch phrase for a long time has been, “I am unapologetically male.” 😀
Maggie, you made a prediction about western culture dieing off. I worry about that too. As I mentioned above , the metrics on childhood welfare show us that kids in two-parent married families outpace those headed by Single Moms. Our kids become the very character of our culture.
The kids are alright.
http://www.youthfacts.org/
There’s also the problem that nearly every country in Europe has dropped below the birth rate needed to maintain population, and Americans are exactly at the minimum rate. Western culture will soon begin to die off and be replaced by younger cultures who don’t feel guilty for reproducing.
OR: standards of living will rise in Eastern, African, etc. societies and their birthrate will also fall.
Only it’s not a “standard of living” issue, but rather a cultural one.
Standard of living and birthrate correlate very closely. For a non-Western example, Japan faces a dramatic drop in population over the next fifty years, as a third of their population dies off from old age. They’re well under replacement.
I’m going to be out of state for several days, so if I seem a bit absent, it’s because I am. I look forward to seeing what you post while I’m away.
……….western culture will die off and be replaced by younger cultures……….
Islamists.
Wow, what a fascinating discussion, I don’t have anything to add – yet! I have come to similar conclusions on marriage after having been married for 12 years and recently divorced. Love certainly has very little to do with marital success or harmony. Stupidly I married for love however I remain convinced that for my X it was a business arrangement. Interestingly my father, an atheist and womaniser extraordinare proported throughout his life that marriage was legalised prostitution and warned me against it. My parents never married and my mother worked while my father cooked (worked occasionally) so I don’t know who was the prostitute in that scenario. None the less, naivety and beligerence led me into a traditional marriage in an intensely patriarcal culture determined to prove everyone wrong.
Alas I failed to resocialise and our marriage has failed (some would say was doomed from the start), and here I am realising that it was based on us fulfilling certain social, financial & physical expectations and not on the idealistic assumption that we were ‘soul mates’ destined to live a life based on deep friendship and shared commitment to similar goals.
While not wanted to sound redundant as it is clear from the posts here – but I have realised that ‘love’ has nothing to do with success of most marriages which goes along way to explaining the modern disillusionment with the arrangement.
What I hear most of you saying is that it can succeed ONLY when and if people are conscious & realistic about their expectations of it- and honest with themselves and each other! Also I hear that the alternatives are not particularly attractive either? I am currently married to the Government according to this discussion and that equally fills me with fear & loathing. Can a woman with dependants EVER avoid being someones WHORE! I don’t want to be a man I just want to be an agent in my own destiny!
Well, you could be your own whore. 😉
Thanks Maggie, I could but I wouldn’t give my X the satisfaction…he did say that’s what I would have to become to survive without him!
When either party in a marriage develops the attitude that the other partner has the greater need or gets more out of the union, that marriage is just as doomed as the one where one partner or the other thinks it’s all for him or her and none for the other.
I’m sorry you had to go through that; as a veteran of a bad first marriage myself, it’s something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. 🙁
I love your comparison of whores and self-employed business women. I’d never thought about how neofeminists encourage women to be independent but then let lose with a smack down on whores. Can’t believe I’ve secretly always wanted to be a whore. Heh.
You’d be amazed how many women tell me that. 🙂
You could add me to that list. LOL!
Your post was great. Some comments:
“Interestingly my father, an atheist and womanizer extraordinaire purported throughout his life that marriage was legalized prostitution and warned me against it.”
This is a truth I have come to see in recent years. I was naive as well until I got some edumucation and opened my eyes.
“here I am realizing that it was based on us fulfilling certain social, financial & physical expectations”
This always has been, and always will be, the truth about traditional marriage.
“and not on the idealistic assumption that we were ‘soul mates’ destined to live a life based on deep friendship and shared commitment to similar goals.”
This is Hollywood. It’s screwed up many a mind. 😐
‘I have realized that ‘love’ has nothing to do with success of most marriages which goes along way to explaining the modern disillusionment with the arrangement.”
Add to that mix that women no longer need husbands financially, and men no longer need wives sexually and you’ll see the big pot of ruh roh soup we’re swimming in.
“What I hear most of you saying is that it can succeed ONLY when and if people are conscious & realistic about their expectations of it- and honest with themselves and each other!”
Which requires maturity. Which normally tends to come after you’ve screwed up a relationship or seventeen. 😐
“Can a woman with dependents EVER avoid being someones WHORE! I don’t want to be a man I just want to be an agent in my own destiny!”
But see…it’s not really that, always having to be a whore. It’s moreso that selling sex will make you more money faster than absolutely anything else, even drugs.
Once you add kids in the mix, unless you highly educated yourself *and* work in a firing-proof and recession-proof industry, what alternatives do you have if you find yourself a single parent?
We need a stiff rewrite of the marital and child support and divorce laws in this country. Pronto. Or else it’s gonna continue to be a lose/lose proposition, marriage… save for the lucky few.
Great feedback ‘Scorch’…i’m taking the ‘educate yourself’ option so I can divorce the government sometime in the near future. As a marriage partner it is just as narrow & restrictive as my former!
And ultimately less fulfilling. As I’ve said before, if I must be chattel I prefer to belong to a human man I can look in the eye and attempt to influence, rather than to a faceless, inhuman collective that doesn’t even know I exist. 🙁
mmmhhhmmm (hands in the air)…”praise GOD to that”
Just read an interesting study that suggests that women in marriages where both parties work full-time are less happy due to higher expectations of emotional input, housework & quality time which in turn results in more ‘nagging’ and emotional distancing by the male partner.
http://www.virginia.edu/sociology/peopleofsociology/wilcoxpapers/Wilcox%20Nock%20marriage.pdf
Conversely, it shows that to some degree women who assume responsibility for majority housework & childcare report greater satisfaction in their marriage. The reason – they expect less, ‘nag’ less which in turn encourages the male partner to be more emotionally open and responsive.
It also discovered that third party support for the marriage institution from sources such as religious affliations & extended family was a predeterminant of longevity & overall happiness.
So does this mean we all go back to traditional gendered arrangements OR, what i suggest – get a cleaner, have a great network of friends for emotional support and make meals a more communal effort (kids, partners, friends, relatives).
The modern marriage is a pressure cooker!
Well, and I’m overgeneralizing here, so let me say that upfront, but you have to understand what marriage means to a lot of American men.
It means that you lose the woman you fell in love with.
And she’ll resent you for it.
-She loses her shape, unless she works out faithfully.
-After having kids, it’s a lot harder for her body to bounce back, barring exceptional genetics.
-It’s very common for women to experience hormonal changes either as a result of having children, or just getting older, that makes them lose interest in sex altogether.
-Many women feel overwhelmed by the needs of the children and the needs of the house, and get resentful of the husband’s needs, and put him last.
-Her equity in the relationship goes up over time, so the older, fatter, and more unattractive she gets, the more of your stuff she’ll take with you if the marriage breaks up.
So in short, for men:
-Better enjoy her while you’re dating, especially if she’s still in her twenties or early thirties. That’s as good as it’s gonna get, and the most sex you’re gonna get from her(pre-marriage that is). And she sure won’t suck your dick after you put a ring on it.
For women:
-June Cleaver had it right.
I would like to challenge the assumption that women are not equally turned off by either their own or their partners aging/changing bodies.
In order to engage enthusiastically in sex a women needs energy (i.e. hire a cleaner), time to get in shape (i.e. a cleaner), and less distractions (i.e a cleaner/babysitter).
We are not blind to the metomorphasis to caterpillar that occuers post babie/s…
(Smiley Face – if i knew how to)
To do a smiley, type colon dash close parentheses, and the program turns it into a face when it posts, like this: 🙂
Sadly, I have to agree to all of the above…
“I would like to challenge the assumption that women are not equally turned off by either their own or their partners aging/changing bodies.”
Oh I don’t assume that at all…can’t speak for anyone else. No woman wants a balding, comb over wearin’ pot bellied loser whose dick takes three days to get hard and thirty seconds to come. 😐
he he he he…so funny! 🙂
…surely sense of humor stands for something? I have laughed more in the last 20 minutes of this post than 10 years of marriage…so GO the pot bellied bald man!
Maggie
I was really intrigued by your exploration of the terms feminism, neofeminism and archeofeminism. Particularly, you comments on the war like hostility neofeminism engenders between the sexes.
It was disturbing as mother to discover the disdain held towards the birth of boys in the educated middle class. I found it quite disgusting & demoralising that males, even at a young age are ridiculed and scorned for their different but complimentary contributions to the playground (i.e. life).
It seems a shame that for all of their collective failings (of which we have our own) the contributions that their fearlessness (generalising here) and boundless energy have made to the advancement of human kind are so often looked upon as a nuisance and a flaw in character.
And I am not suggesting here that little girls do not contain these same qualities however, they are not looked upon with consternation but with pride in how ‘strong & independant’ she is! My experience of many middle class men & boys as that of a Eunuch, worse still an embarrassment if he is to masculine. Praise is heaped upon the man who bakes muffins for his kids afternoon tea and frowned upon from the woman who does the same…
So much hypocrisy & confusion!
Precisely. The neofeminists want to masculinize women and feminize men, so they praise masculine traits in women and attack them in men, and vice-versa with feminine traits. It would be funny if it weren’t taken seriously by our sick culture. 🙁
Well men….the only way to win at this game is to
1) Stay single
2) Not care if she screws someone else
…That’s pretty much the only way to win. That short circuits their power.
Unfortunately, that can be very hard to do. 😐
Unless of course, you are the kind of man that can be satisfied with Courtesans all of your life, in which case, everybody wins.
*sigh* But eventually, something about the male heart wants them to care, and when you do, it’s over. They’re laughing at how easy it is.
I totally disagree about the “not care if she screws someone else”; since only about 15% of women cheat, it’s hardly a cause for concern in the average marriage. Now, men cheating, on the other hand…
“I totally disagree about the “not care if she screws someone else”; since only about 15% of women cheat, it’s hardly a cause for concern in the average marriage.”
Yeah but most men don’t know that, and it can be used as a threat to get into marriage, and a weapon once married. That’s more so what I meant.
Some women may not actually cheat, but they’ll sure flirt to make you *think* they will to manipulate you.
The point is, if you care about the vagina too much, you’re sunk as a man. But if you can get past that, everything’s different. But most of us can’t.
Any man who is fool enough to marry a woman who threatens to cheat on him even before they’re married gets exactly what he deserves. In a lot of the bachelor parties I did the groom requested I do something his prospective bride wouldn’t do, and always wondered why he was marrying her in the first place if she was already hitting him with “nos”. I mean, this is 21st-century U.S. we’re talking about; she hasn’t got a dowry and there’s no political alliance at stake and your kids by her won’t have any advantages over kids by another woman, so why are you marrying her? A combination of biochemistry and insecurity is why; men are better off waiting until they’re above 30 and then picking and choosing. And that’s one of the reasons non-lesbian neofeminists hate whores with such a passion; we allow men to even up their chances in the ridiculous rigged game American marriage has become. 🙁
Yah Maggie I’d have to agree with you on all points there as well.
[…] until very recently, was largely a business arrangement, not a love match. Maggie McNeill blogs at The Honest […]
this is brilliant – thxs
The [royal] title “sire” clearly reflects back upon this [paternal] role of his.
I think that’s backwards. Sire is from French sieur ‘lord’ (from Latin senior ‘elder’); the sense ‘father’ is much later.
But king is related to kin, though.