The “mommy wars”, the debate whether women should stay at home with the kids or go to work, is rarely brought up in the manosphere if at all. There is an excellent reason for this. In terms of anti-feminism the mommy wars are meaningless. In fact, the mommy wars serve as nothing but a distraction for actual anti-feminism and are another example of the argument between various forms of feminism/female supremacism on how to best extract money and resources from men (or how to best hold the whip over men).
Socons (social conservatives) use two main arguments for women staying home, traditionalism and children. ”Traditionalism” isn’t about what was traditional over human history but what the archetypal stay at home mother of the 1950s which was an aberration and wasn’t even universal back then. Throughout history women have done work that added income to the family. In addition there weren’t washing machines, stoves, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, etc. so there was more work to be done in maintaining a household. In the future more and more of household maintenance will be handled by robots such as the roomba leaving less and less work for a woman in maintaining the household. The idea that women should stay home with young children has merit. However, children grow up, move out, and live their own lives. As people live longer the time a woman would spend having young children is a diminishing percentage of woman’s life. What is she doing with the rest of her life? What socons seek to produce is not stay at home motherhood or traditional families but domestic divas who have little to no work to do.
The level to which socons want women to not be involved with things outside the home is extreme. Some socons even object to having their daughters spend any time at church ministries. Considering that a church ministry usually involves some degree of community service, they are even objecting to women doing any community service whatsoever in favor of “being at home”. The question must be asked, “What are these socon domestic divas and proto-domestic divas (their daughters) doing all day?” The answer seems to involve claiming that it takes an army of women to clean a house and that unmarried daughters should stay at home doing make work jobs of questionable merit like “sewing her wardrobe”. It seems to be all about minimizing work that women do and hiding this fact from men.
While feminists want women to go to work (or more accurately to a job), they are similar to the socons. Feminists will claim that women with jobs are “more productive” and “doing real work”. This is wrong. Over the last several decades many women have poured into the workforce into jobs like public sector jobs, quasi-public sector jobs like healthcare and education, human resources, etc. What do these jobs have in common? They are bureaucratic, bloated, inefficient, ossified, and in most cases unnecessary. In addition, they wreck the productive sectors of the economy. Many of these jobs are nothing but make work jobs, and women hold these economy wrecking make work jobs. Even outside of these sectors of employment, women can cause problems. A feminist had this to say about housewives trying to get work:
During preliminary interviews with housewives she saw that they had one thing in common: an extremely infantilized mode of behavior. Whenever the conversation didn’t go exactly as they wanted, they would become highly emotional, raise their woices, bcome irritable, cry, make unreasonable demands. They had no understanding of how to negotiate or listen to others. Their expectations of what they are owed by recruiters and employers were extremely inflated. It was obvious that inscribing themselves into the hierarchies of a workplace, curbing their highly emotional response to every slight contretemps and learning to listen to other people was going to be next to impossible for them.
Any man willing to be honest about it will easily be able to come up with multiple examples of women acting like this who are not housewives or former housewives. These are more reasons why feminists are wrong about women in jobs automatically being productive or doing real work. Like with the socons, it’s about minimizing the work women do and hiding this from men. The feminists and socons just disagree about the best way to do that.
On the other hand the feminists and the socons do agree that men are at fault for not making their respective positions happen. Feminists claim that men are evil brutes trying to keep women at home, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Socons are claiming that men have become “unmanly” and are forcing their wives to work, and that men are “pressuring” women to go college. Whatever their positions in the mommy wars, both the feminists and socons attack men with truckloads of shaming language. This is why the mommy wars are a distraction completely useless to men and useless to anti-feminism. It is nothing but an argument about how to best hold the whip over men in a very literal sense because the mommy wars are about women doing as little work as possible and making men do more.
{ 68 comments… read them below or add one }
Good article, PMAFT.
And true, to an extent. At least the smarter women are doing useful things if they do stay home like raise the kids while doing other income producing or AT LEAST mind enhancing activities (homeschooling) , I’ll cite Hestia as one such woman, and Grerp as another.
It’s the extreme women must stay home/must work women, feminists, and so-con’s we must watch out for and for all the reasons you cited.
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The thing no one ever mentions is that feminism never stated: “Ladies, if you work really HARD and strive for excellence you will go far.”
No, feminism simply made the huge implication that women were automatically better at everything (including ‘career’ wise) simply because they had a vagina. So ironically feminism made the least amount of demands on women in the workplace and the white knights bent over backwards to roll out the red carpet with ‘flex’ time and all kinds of workplace related insanity – leading to the completely useless loiterers we see all around us today in the corporate world.
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FEMINISM-ANTFEMINISM is the distraction BRO.
It is such a big distraction concoccted by elites in positions of authority to keep ordinary men perpetually mobilised for a phoney and synthetic gender war.
It is such a big distraction concoccted by elites in positions of authority to keep ordinary men sufficiently querrulous amongst themselves as to enable their meticulouslly institutionalised lawfull and orderly exploitation.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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“It is such a big distraction concoccted by elites in positions of authority to keep ordinary men sufficiently querrulous amongst themselves as to enable their meticulouslly institutionalised lawfull and orderly exploitation.”
True point, Poiuyt, as it has ALWAYS been the aim of Alpha males to use females to exploit the Beta and Gamma class males since the monolith was first placed here.
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I submitted a term to Urban Dictionary called “Momaholic” which sums up how mothers really cannot grasp that they MUST let their children go at the proper age, with the related preparation that comes with that.
Men have an instinctive notion of this, and ‘get out of their kids hair’ when they are in their late teens. Men also understand life phases, so they are no longer a burden. I think the baby boomer generation missed this concept and thought that being ‘friends’ and able to relate to their kids is beneficial, when in fact the opposite is true – children need parents to cut them loose.
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Not necessarily POIUYT. Yes, feminism’s power is largely derived from the political clout given to it by the elites, but America has always been pretty unorthodox in that men, high status or otherwise, were ususally called out on their crimes and transgressions by the masses for a large part until very recently (and pretty much still are outside of the crap mainstream media), but by contrast, have usually bent over backwards in deference to women on the basis of them having a vagina.
What ultimately allowed the elites of America to infringe on the rights of average men was using the interests of “women and children” to justify crap like the family courts, divorce laws, child support, and paedo/rape hysteria as well as gender egalitarianism and discarding any sense of masculine identity not tied towards servicing the whims of women because white American beta males largely still instinctively rationalize any legislation against males as justifiable for the sake of women and children.
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The middle class is going extinct, as China and India gain a growing middle class. We’ll never recover from the housing crisis and current unemployment. This IS the new normal. There will be an upper-class of mothers that stay home and a lower class of mothers that live off of government assistance. Women aren’t selecting middle class men, because they’ve become middle class themselves through “financial independence”. Middle class men are avoiding marriage because remaining single has become a better/safer alternative.
Imagine all those sub-divisions of “single family homes” with no single families to move into them. That’s a lot of inventory with little demand.
Watch the private sector move more jobs overseas, as the public sector continues to higher predominantly women. Little enclaves of disenfranchised men, (who would have been middle class earners), will exist. In tent cities, trailer homes, maybe squating in abandon homes or buildings…
As the middle class becomes lower and the rich richer, class warfare will be the order of the day. Marshall Law, censorship and tyranny. The elites can’t wait, because there is limited power without a ruling class and an oppressed.
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@PRO-MALE:
You are absolutely right, IMO.
Women are cunning and manipulative. It’s a game they play.
If only women were telling the truth when they say they want independance from men. It would be a nice improvement if they really could go their own way.
Then we could talk equal to equal.
Nobody owes anyone a thing. Free relationships with no expectation and no commitment. Simply put: freedom.
And that means the state must get out of our lives.
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In other news :
Antifeminist lawsuits are actually being filed :
http://nalert.blogspot.com/2011/01/one-mans-losing-fight-against-ladies.html
While we may not care about this particular frivolity, it sets a precedent for all sorts of anti-misandry suits.
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Excellent article, PMAFT. Some comments:
This is possible, of course, but I think that the future holds steeply rising energy costs, which will allow for fewer timesaving household devices. Dishwashers, dryers, even automatic washers (with rinse and spin cycles) require lots of energy. Humanoid helper robots like Asimo could be mass produced, of course, but they would require lots of energy. Indeed, it is the presence of these energy-intense devices that allows women to become single moms and still maintain a barely livable household. The presence of cheap energy also allows men to eke out a living in a small apartment while sending the bulk of their money to their ex-wives.
This trend will also curtail itself. Broadly speaking, the fight against aging is a fight against entropy, which requires the expenditure of high quality energy, found in, for example, carbon bonds. As energy becomes more expensive, human lifespans will stop increasing. Consider that health care costs already consume almost 50% of each Canadian province’s budget, and are projected to consume 70% in 12 years.
http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/budget/ontariobudgets/2010/sectors/health.pdf
Yep, I agree. But again, this has only been made possible due to the low costs of energy. Cheap gasoline makes it possible for dad to do a two hour commute and for his taxes to pay for mom’s job at the same time.
In the future, neither the stay-at-home diva model nor the feminist make-work model will be viable.
Nor will the welfare queen-alpha male father model be viable. Thanks in part to envirohippies and their idiotic push for biofuels, food and oil are now partial substitute goods. When oil prices go up, food costs more. Whoops, no more food stamps for Octomom.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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@ Heathcliff
Even the trolls don’t whine about their tollish posts being downvoted.
Very manly of you.
You can view them, they’re not moderated out like most web sites, they exist, but they don’t block discourse which is what trolls are here to do, not assist discourse, but to block or stop it.
IMO you are a troll for “traditional women” who are, and they admit it, feminists who just are too lazy to work.
Exhibit #1: Sarah Palin identifies as a feminist, how much more evidence to do you need.
And don’t worry, your response will be downvoted into oblivion by those of us tired of being used and abused by your “traditional” parasites.
Will have our say here. Despite how much you mangina’s hate it.
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You know the quotes above remind me of the things female anti-sufferagettes used to say against women getting the vote ( and thus controling the government as they are the majority).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-suffragism
“It was closely associated with “domestic feminism”, the belief that women had the right to complete freedom within the home.”
How well those women knew their gender. They knew women would be force from the home by their own sisters.
In the quotes above it seems todays traditional women are very used to being the absolute boss of their house and, at least in the opinion of the left feminist, could not every give up this power even to have a conversation at work.
Queens of the castle.
Let’s not build them anymore.
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but I think that the future holds steeply rising energy costs, which will allow for fewer timesaving household devices.
Actually, no. Energy costs as a percentage of GDP have already peaked.
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@keyster
Did you mean unlimited power with a ruling class and an oppressed? Or did I read the rest of your comment wrong?
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Women have no obligations to their offspring. They may terminate the pregnancy, they may give the child up for adoption at any time, they mat even murder their children and some man will be blamed.
Why should I give a rat’s ass what women think of staying home with the kids?
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@Clarence
Homeschooling is certainly a productive thing for women to do but children grow up. There’s no reason for women to avoid productive work even if it’s just unpaid community service before or after children.
Hestia and Hero are good examples showing that make work jobs for women are unnecessary.
@Heathcliff
It’s not my responsibility, the responsibility of men, or the responsibility of government to find productive work to do, much less create make work jobs where women pretend to work. Throwing women into the private sector workforce isn’t the answer either since they will (on average) be disruptive there as well. Tasks like “perfecting cooking” don’t take that long. What’s she doing with the rest of her time?
Taking steps to prevent economic devastation and eliminate big government is not nihilism.
@Peter
Electrical generation and oil are two different things. Roombas or their future versions are not going to be gas powered. Anti-aging tech will lower healthcare costs as it will prevent old age health problems that are expensive.
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So, they are discussing what mother’s should do.
Has no effect on me.
Am paying for mothers to get subsidized daycare, if they are working.
Am paying mothers to get free daycare if they are not working (this I cannot grasp. Free daycare for unemployed mothers… Wtf?)
Am paying for mothers staying home, if they are not working…
Am paying for mother staying home, if they are on maternity leave.
Oh, and in finland, am also effing paying for the child support that the father refuses to pay, in case it was ordered and he does not pay.
And when I need some of that “free healthcare?”, I get xrayed as if it was 19effing39 for a problem that necessitates a MRI.
In this discussion, I only see my past present and future earnings blow up in smoke.
Rather smell some bean eating fat dude’s fart than that smoke, you ask me.
Eff this.. Women this women that.
Why should I even care anymore?
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Social conservatism is a broad category and I won’t attempt to defend everyone claiming to be in it. Still, I disagree with the claim the Mommy Wars are a distraction.
You have to remember exactly what feminists are arguing (such as the feminist, Clarissa, linked to in the main post). They are arguing that the traditionally male career role is the human one because it allows greater independence and autonomy. What matters, then, is for women to live independent, autonomous lives.
And how can women do this? First, by deferring a commitment to marriage and motherhood in favour of a single girl lifestyle based on careers, casual relationships, travel etc. Women don’t usually give up entirely on the idea of marriage and motherhood but they do commonly defer it to some vague time in their 30s. And this deferral distorts the way that women select for men when in their 20s. Women no longer need seek decent men of their own level, but can play around with the bad boy types, hang out for the alpha male etc. The man who does want to marry is supposed to wait till his 30s for some woman who has wasted her fertile years and her youthful passion on a series of casual affairs with the “wrong” sort of men.
How else do women maximise independence and autonomy? By looking for support from the state rather than from a man. For instance, women might be supported by welfare payments to raise a child alone as a single mother without a man; or she might be supported to take time off work by state mandated paid maternal leave; or she might be supported to choose to divorce her husband through state laws pertaining to no fault divorce, alimony and child support. When the state bolsters female independence in this way, the balance in relationships between men and women is altered.
And if the male career role is the fully human one, then why was it denied to women in the past? Why were women expected to do more of the domestic, motherhood role instead? The feminist answer is that men as a class socially constructed gender roles in order to live comfortable privileged lives at the expense of women. Therefore, the argument goes, we need a society wide transformation to deconstruct patriarchal privilege and to improve the status of women. Men then find themselves being cast as the villains of society, the ones with no moral standing whose “privilege” is the target of numerous state-backed reform campaigns.
See how the first principles involved in the Mommy Wars debate flow on in ways that have major consequences for men? It’s not as if feminists like Clarissa are taking a practical, pragmatic attitude along the lines of “Once the kids are a bit older, it’s possible for women to do some paid work.” Her attitude is a viciously ideological one; she even states her belief that it is “castrating” for a woman to choose to spend time at home with her young children.
It’s best if we confront feminist first principles wherever they arise.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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I have found this article a bit unclear.
A problem is, first, if feminists share same ideas as some other groups, the socons.
A different problem is what women should do with their lives.
And, sincerely, none of them seem interesting for the men’s rights topics.
What women did before the rise of feminism? In ancient times, poor women helped husband in hard labor, farming and cultivating. And rich women had a lot of servants and maids. Recently, a lot of secretaries, waitresses and nurses did just fine.
After the feminism, it was clear women were not good for much more else, otherwise the affirmative action would have been not necessary. Starting with elimination of affirmative action, and the market will define what women do. Exaclty as it should define what any loser and uncapable do, if they want survive (for this, elimination of government bureaucracy too is needed).
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@Heathcliff:
I think what we MRAs have a problem with is how society brainwashes us from an early age into the maxim that women are our equals, and that the Patriarchy (meaning you and I) have kept them down. So they deserve special treatment, but at the same time demand respect. Cake. Eating it. Can’t have both.
And in my vast work experience, women are very unproductive, droning on and on about their homelife, whereas the aggressive male (you know, the one’s there to make the company succeed and expect due compensation) are browbeaten, belittled, passed over, or backstabbed. Their concerns are childish. Now, if you agree and love conversing over lattes with these middle age harridans, that’s your prerogative, but don’t castigate guys like me who want this dynamic to be completely upturned.
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This doesn’t fit my definition of independence. The only thing I see going on here is a transference of dependency from an individual man to the state. The state then takes a much more paternalistic role than the average husband, and tends to treat all women pretty much the same, rather than as individuals.
Feminist distortion of language is very crafty. Few men had careers, most had jobs – if they were lucky enough to have one. In the first half of the 19th century, there were no laws protecting women or children or restricting their labor. http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/coalMine.html One of the first things you will see on that page is this picture – http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/HgirlCrawling.jpg of a girl or woman crawling on her hands and knees dragging a cart full of coal. This is hardly what would normally come to mind in response to the phrase “fully human.” Something like “treated like a human mule” would seem more accurate.
The elevation of women above men, and their liberation from this type of back breaking work, was actually considered social progress in the mid 19th century. Men were still required to do such work, but the union movement was instrumental in raising wages to the level where one man could earn enough to support a nonworking wife and mother.
The reason that women were expected to do more of the rest of the work necessary to maintain life and raise children is simply because the man could not work all day in the mines or the factories, and then do the rest when he came home. Someone had to raise the kids and cook the meals, so that duty fell on the women who were not otherwise employed. Over time, social values developed which gave esteem to both these roles – men as providers and women as nurturers and raisers of children – and pressured people into them.
Encouraging women to push the men who were their protectors and providers out of the home, and then being pushed themselves out into the workforce, has resulted in anything but independence and autonomy for women. The women who today can legitimately be said to have the most independence and autonomy have been those who mated with men who had the ability to provide for them and give them the luxury of devoting their time to their children, instead of being forced to work for subsistence wages simply to keep from starving to death.
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While “pussys” is at the height of intelligent insightful argument?
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zed January 14, 2011 at 15:01
Correct Zed. I laughed my arse off the day I realised that the womens claim of ‘right to work’ has already morphed into ‘obligation to work’ inside 40 years. That’s as dumb as it gets.
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Surprise, surprise. The bunch of criminals called ‘the supreme court’ don’t want to hear a case that exposes them as criminals! LOL!!! My mate Ricky Partington today got a response from the criminal calling himself Paul Le Large who is the register of the family court in Parammatta sydney about an affidavit Ricky submitted. Paul’s reply is basically “we don’t like this so we won’t accept it”. Surprise, surprise.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Heatcliff, one very important thing Traditionalists forget is that it is society’s job to raise boys into young men who are emotionally invested in advancing the interests of society at large which is why rites of passage were a staple of most traditional cultures.
Its a fact that men just aren’t willing to cooperate with other men unless there is an apparent degree of mutual respect and integrity between them. Traditionalists however bought into the tripe of gender egalitarianism and since Puritian Americans are essentially women worshippers, they have long forgotten about the workings of organic masculinity and how to construct society around those limitations and assumed that men were as collectivest as women.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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To add onto my last post, of course young men are going to end up individualistic and uninvolved if society doesn’t remember to raise us to be productive and to reward this productiveness that keeps society running appropriately. You can harp on us all you want for our self-centeredness, but the “traditionalists” aren’t gonna do **** to reverse societal decay until the we hit rock bottom.
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All I know is these young women today, I’m talking about 18-24 year olds better get a good education and good jobs because my retirement plan is very expensive and I intend to live a long life.
If you are a female and reading this, stop goofing off and get back to work.
Good girl.
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Meanwhile, I will (sigh) resign myself to being less than “fully human”, and spend more time fishing and less time working.
You GO, grrls!
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Peter wrote:
This is possible, of course, but I think that the future holds steeply rising energy costs,which will allow for fewer timesaving household devices.>/i>
That’s hardly a given. First, transportation (first land, then air) is the biggest energy consumer, not ‘household devices’. Second, look at the advances in low-power computing devices in just a few years. For the most part, rising energy costs spur innovation in doing more with less.
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Second, look at the advances in low-power computing devices in just a few years. For the most part, rising energy costs spur innovation in doing more with less.
Totally. US economic output per unit of oil consumed has already tripled since 1973, on an inflation-adjusted basis. Oil at $92 today is not compelling most people to even carpool to work, let alone take more drastic measures.
That ‘Peak Oil’ will cause economic catastrophe is a hoax just like Global Warming was…
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Heathcliff wrote:
PMAFT, I am not saying it is your responsibility but it is your arguement.
In other words, it’s not his problem. Gloria Steinem once verbalized that women need men like fish need bicycles. Now it looks like the shoe has migrated to the other foot. Oh well.
You seem to be saying that women should not stay home,
They can if and only if her husband can float both of them with only his income. The combination of the increase in housing prices due to the presence of two wage earners and decrease in real wages due to the increase in work force size has painted women into a corner. At one time a second income was nice to have. Now they have no choice but to work, especially if they want to live in that nice McMansion.
women should not work at government jobs, women should not work in private sector jobs.
It’s true they tend to be worse than useless at those jobs. I’d say most of the enormous rise in bureaucratic waste in both the public and private sector has been due to the influx of women into the workforce.
What role do you envision for women?
There are occupations where women traditionally have done well with, such as nursing and teaching. Of course, the relentless march of technology is going to push them out of those fields eventually. In the 19th and 20th centuries the value of many of men’s attributes was reduced by technology; in the 21st the same is going to be true for women.
They’re 51% of the population, you’re going to run into them somewhere.
Maybe a similar one that men have? Everyone for himself or herself? Wonder how that’s going to turn out. I used to wonder why women in third world countries were so much more amenable. Now I know why – without a male protector, their lives are likely to be sheer hell.
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Totally. US economic output per unit of oil consumed has already tripled since 1973, on an inflation-adjusted basis.
That’s because in 1973 the US economic output was automobiles. It doesn’t take a lot of oil to produce bullshit.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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TFH wrote:
Totally. US economic output per unit of oil consumed has already tripled since 1973, on an inflation-adjusted basis. Oil at $92 today is not compelling most people to even carpool to work, let alone take more drastic measures.
The chicken littles who predict disaster just around every corner never seem to mention facts like these. The modeling done by the Club of Rome in the 1970′s made no allowances for advances in technology or changes in human behavior to differing incentives (the principle of economic subsitution is one such example). Predictably enough, they got a Malthusian result of economic and population collapse.
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That is because we are using the Keynesian model of valuing a lawyer’s brief as “economic output” on par with a ton of steel.
1960 was the crossover point when the scales tipped from >50% of the population being involved with producing something to >50% being involved in sales, services, transportation, or management. In other words, we went from being a nation of producers to being a nation of handlers.
We can only survive as an “information economy” as long as we have information that the nations which produce durable and consumable goods to sell us want to buy. I don’t remember when the last time that cash flow in exceeded cash flow out, but it has been a fairly long time. Economic output is only half the picture, one must also consider economic consumption and compare the two on the balance sheet to determine whether we are in the black or the red.
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Thank you for covering this!
In one of my posts, I wrote the following:
“On one end you have women who strongly believe that they must work all the time and on the other end you have women who believe they should stay at home all the time. Both ends don’t take into account a man’s opinion or authority. Both seem to demand, I am woman and this is what I want, whether men like it or not. ”
Looking back now, that was a big “a-ha moment” for me. I didn’t realize it at the time but the more I learn and read articles such as this one, it shouts loud and clear that at the root of both extremes is still an aversion to considering what men want; what their thoughts, feelings, and needs are.
The “mommy wars” are simply women fighting amongst themselves about what is best for them (or women as a group), without much thought as to the men in their lives. If much thought was given to men, they would not be accusing men of not being “real men” if they don’t do this, that, and the other. I don’t care where a woman is on the political spectrum, if she is accusing men of not being a “real man” in any sort of way, be warned.
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There are actually 3 conditions in your first sentence –
First, the woman has to have a husband, which is getting very close to becoming the exception rather than the norm. Second, said husband must be capable of generating by himself sufficient income to support the consuming habits of 2 or more people in the “lifestyle to which they have become accustomed, and desire to maintain.” And, third, said husband must be willing to do all that.
This is where all the man-bashing of the past few decades is starting to build up to toxic levels. Women need men like fish need bicycles. Despite actual studies which have shown that men work more hours per week than women do, we still have the myth of the “2nd shift” to go along with the mythical “glass ceiling” to prove that women are victims, that they are always victims, and that they can never be anything but victims.
No matter what strategy a man chooses, he is victimizing women. If he works hard, maybe paid overtime or just extra hours at a salaried job vying for the next promotion, and makes enough to support a SAHM, he has now collectively victimized women because “women STILL only make 77 cents for ever $1 a man makes.” If he makes less, and can’t meet his ridiculous Child Support obligation, he is a “deadbeat dad” and public enemy #1.
The mancession, the torpedoing of boys off the success track starting 25 years ago by drugging them with Ritalin, and the shrinking economy are the perfect storm which guarantees that there simply won’t be enough high-earning men to support SAHMs, so women are going to have to work. But, with much of our actual productive capacity sent offshore, most of the jobs are taxpayer supported public sector jobs. As states struggle to keep their economies from collapsing, and raise taxes like Illinois just has by as much as 66%, the squeeze is just going to get worse.
Since I will never in my life either take on the risks inherent in getting married and supporting a woman these days, nor repay all the contempt and bashing I have endured for the past 40 years by giving a woman early retirement, they pretty much don’t have any choice but to work and support themselves.
I’ll hold on to my own job as long as I can, and after that my attitude is “every woman for herself.”
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zed,
1960 was the crossover point when the scales tipped from >50% of the population being involved with producing something to >50% being involved in sales, services, transportation, or management. In other words, we went from being a nation of producers to being a nation of handlers.
Yes, but this is the case for almost all wealthy nations.
Other consequences are severe, of course. A lot of brawny men got marginalized as manufacturing left, while a lot of women got useless office jobs and think they are too good for those blue-collar men (see : black men and black women).
We can only survive as an “information economy” as long as we have information that the nations which produce durable and consumable goods to sell us want to buy.
Yes, but America’s prospects are still less bleak than Europe’s or Japan’s in this regard.
In other words, the whole West + Japan has to decline for America to decline. That could happen, but America is not the weakest horse.
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“Traditionalism” agenda is –just like “tax break will deconstruct govt” argument– wishful thinking that NEVER grapples with why it _didn’t work in the first place._
(Note I do like traditionalism, being a “Lothar of the Hill People” type.)
No one grapples with why we didn’t stay “traditionalists” in the first place? (CLUE: “ABGamma Principle” –yep.)
One reason conservativism didn’t work in the first place is capitalist “growth” agenda (ie ‘tax break’ argument) is in direct opposition to traditionalism. Duh.
Wake me up when you figure it out…
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Gentlemen,
The summary of all this is :
1) It is in women’s nature to shit test. They can’t help it, and will shit test even to their own detriment. Women are attracted to serial killers partly due to the likelihood that such a man can pass shit tests.
2) When women get the right to vote, their millions of individual shit tests merge into one gigantic shit-testing juggernaut.
3) This creates shit tests that almost no men can pass.
4) Civilization ends.
We have not yet seen a nation that has had female suffrage for a full 100 years (the US is now in its 92nd year). It is thus TBD whether a society can survive 100 years of women voting.
When future historians debate the decline of the West (and by future, I mean 30 years from now), giving women the right to vote will be a debated subject at the time.
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Interesting. I daresay women are better suited for home life. But then again all of domestic civilization is like one giant palace. I mean is she not supposed to to go to the garage, or the backyard? I mean we live in cities. One big family. It’s … very much like a matrix.
http://mensnewsdaily.com/2010/06/17/the-mommy-matrix/
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“Career” and “Job” is self-indulgent psycho-babble. The natural domain of da wimminz and increasingly infected femmy minded males.
To the tribal elders, there is only WORK. Which is only PRODUCTIVE. The only purpose of which is to… enrich the owners of capital, sold as beneficial to the tribe. That is a whole other discussion. Productivity being the fundamental propaganda meme that the master uses to enslave MEN in this tribal breeding program that is socieetee. l dunno whther wimminz get it or not. They seem happy enuff with it all. Either way, if l could care any less about that and them than l do, l would.
MEN… Go Your Own Way. Live Your Life. Forget marriage, co-hab and breeding. Live for thy life. Do less than you can. Do even less than they need you to. Don’t be a slave. Let the slave masters and the dependent users of your existence cry, cry and cry some more. Leave them to enjoy their misery. There is a place where your grass is greener. They tell there isn’t to keep you tiling their plantations.
Dont worry and BE HAPPY.
If we have the courage to do this we will have changed our own existence without recourse and THEIR whole mess will change overnight.
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@poester
The elites WANT to be the ruling class because they “know what’s best for the ignorant proles”. They’ll institute a new rule of social and economic “justice”, so we’ll all be equal and they can overlord the NWO from their palaces. No one will be better than anyone else except them, because in their minds they already are.
If only the idiotic “right wingnutz” would go away or shut up, they could re-invent the Constitution to be more fair to minorities, women and the under-privilaged. It was written by a bunch of racist/sexist old white guys anyway. It’s time we “progress”. First academia, then the mass media and now the government. It’s a slow march.
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I can only quote Pericles‘ Funeral Oration, “a good woman is one that it is neither heard nor seen in public, nor spoken of in public.”
Yeah the Athenians had their shit together.
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Hello women, fembots, NAWALTS, SoCons, and the rest of team vagina.
You can all rot in hell.
For all you little girls watching from the sidelines waiting to see who will win. You can rot on this earth and die alone.
You want men???? Then why don’t you start fighting with them instead of undermining their efforts.
Pretty soon there will be no exit off the freeway. Exit while you can, because once you pass the last one you are doomed.
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Peter: I agree that peak oil, or other peaking resources, like credit, clean water, farmland and unpolluted areas in general will change the landscape in a not long future. I also think that cheap energy is a key element in understanding how feminism could reach the position of power it is in, for the moment.
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TFH: “Actually, no. Energy costs as a percentage of GDP have already peaked.”
What do you mean? Only the use of something limited can peak at a certain point of time. A percentage is limited at 100 percent. There is no natural limitation to how big a part of GDP energy costs can be of GDP. Energy costs and GDP are interrelated, though, and it is safe to say that GDP going down will limit the demand for energy and therefor the price of energy and that the price of energy going up will limit increases in GDP. What we cannot say is whether a certain energy cost/GDP ratio is a mark that will never be achieved again. It is a bit like the relation between house inflation and inflation in general.
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An important aspect of this article is the role of the churches, both conservative and liberal, in feminizing American men. The churches want the old chivalry code because they played a central role in constructing it in the first place.
Conservative churches, contrary to popular opinion, are bad for men because they construct a nice-guy, mangina persona – a yes-man for a stay-at-home princess.
Why are the most truly feminine women also Buddhist women or from Buddhist-saturated Asian cultures?
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Whether women stay at home or go out to work, so long as they pay for their own kids and leave me alone, it’s good.
Unfortunately, in any feminized country, some of your taxpayer’s money will inevitably be leeched off to subsidize single mothers and their bastards. Your best solution is to work under the radar, work overseas in a less feminized country. Starve the beast, let it shrivel up and die.
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I think that Mark richardson makes a good point. Do we not agree that traditional marriage with women staying home throws a wrench into the cock carousel and lets hard-working beta providers have sex with women in their 20s?
I’m not saying that this makes traditional marriage the right choice; I’m just saying that it does not exploit men or make us slaves to women in the same way that many forms of feminism do.
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Zed wrote,
“That is because we are using the Keynesian model of valuing a lawyer’s brief as “economic output” on par with a ton of steel. “
Quite right. One of the chief stupidities in Keynesianism’s is his ridiculous labor theory of value. A lawyer’s brief, while representing labor, is pure parasite drag. It is not value-added.
Where I differ from Zed is in his derision of the so-called knowledge economy. The knowledge economy != Keynesianism. One can handle or manipulate information and add value to the final product, that is measurable in the differential price paid by the consumer. This is different from counting labor as production, and this is different from jobs like law, education, and health care which, if they add value at all, do so indirectly. And then there is government/military, which do not add economic value whatsoever and instead destroy it.
I think we men should welcome the arrival of the knowledge economy for the opportunity it provides for men to re-insert themselves into the family home. I for one think that industrialization, by removing the man from his historical role as the master of the home, provided the pretext (and the power vacuum) for women to expand their sphere at the expense of men.
“But, with much of our actual productive capacity sent offshore, most of the jobs are taxpayer supported public sector jobs.”
Let me see if I can add some fidelity to this.
The knowledge economy cheerleaders (of which I am not) claim that knowledge jobs will expan to partially–key word, partially–fill the vacuum left behind by traditional manufacturing jobs. The not economically productive services sector will grow a touch, and of course there is always the growing government sector.
The key here is whether or not the knowledge sector jobs will materialize. I have no way of knowing whether or not they will. My hunch is that productive knowledge-sector jobs will not replace lost widget manufacturing jobs one for one.
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“That is because we are using the Keynesian model of valuing a lawyer’s brief as “economic output” on par with a ton of steel. “
Value is subjective. If someone values a lawyers brief at $1,000,000 and another guy sells a ton of steel at $5.00, then in this transaction both values are true and accurate.
In this instance a lawyers power of coercion is worth more than a ton of steel. Value has nothing to do with labor imputed. Absolutely nothing.
If one man bakes an apple pie in eight hours and another man bakes eight apple pies in an hour is the first man’s apple pie worth more than the second man’s eight apple pies? After all he put eight hours of labor into it.
This is just a fact of life you can’t get around.
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Read what I said again, EW. I think you misunderstood it. I’m not deriding the idea of a knowledge economy, I am pointing out some of its pitfalls – very specifically the fact that the very nature of knowledge economy jobs make them even easier to outsource than brick-and-mortar-type jobs that require significant capital.
All commerce operates on the principle of “what do you have that I want but don’t have?” At a barter level economy this translates to trading meat for potatoes. Both sides trade a commodity which they have in surplus for a commodity they don’t have.
The problem with knowledge is that it only has situational value. If you are cold and wet in the woods, which commodity has greater value – the knowledge of how to start a fire by rubbing 2 sticks together, or a box of matches?
If I need a gallon of gas for my automobile, snow blower, or gas powered string trimmer, and I go to someone who has that gallon of gas and say “I will trade you knowledge for that gas” his response is going to be – “Well, what do you know that I don’t know, that will be as valuable to me as this gallon of gas?”
Two sheep farmers who both have a surplus of sheep but a shortage of hay have no foundation on which to trade.
Unless we have knowledge that the other guy doesn’t have, and wants, we have nothing to trade. So, any value in the knowledge economy starts to come from delivery. Cable TV is the perfect example of this. The general business model is to purchase content from someone else and charge the consumer for the service of delivering that content (information) to their home. It is a market which exists entirely and solely in the part of personal economy termed “disposable income.” No one ever starved or froze to death because cable TV did not get delivered.
The first problem with a so-called knowledge economy is that knowledge can easily be copied and distributed. And, the second problem is that it can be distributed from anywhere due to the advancement of technology.
Both India and Ireland operate massive “call centers” which provide information delivery services to a variety of customer bases. If I pick up my phone to order a pizza from Pizza Hut, the chances are that the phone rings in India. If I have a problem with my computer and call customer support, it may well be the case that the phone rings in another part of the call center which just handled my order for pizza.
There is very little knowledge that exists at the same level of fundamental necessity as food, water, shelter, and heat. And what little of it that this economy does have, control of it is lost the moment it is sold once. Any halfway competent hacker can buy a legitimate copy of a CD or DVD and make 1,000s of bootleg copies. A steel mill, or manufacturer of kitchen appliances, does not need an extensive and elaborate enforcement mechanism to keep thieves from cloning their product and then making their own profit on redistributing it.
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The problem with traditional marriage is that it is still covered by US divorce law. A man who marries a traditional woman had better pray every night his wife stays that way. I have seen supposedly religious women eviscerate their husbands just as heartlessly as a leftist feminist. Better yet, her “sisters” in the church often rally to her side.
Even good people can change over the years. That’s not necessarily an attack on women, just reality.
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Subjective and situational. Go to Haiti and ask some resident of one of the tent cities whether they would be more likely to trade half that fish they just caught for a 1/2 pound of rice or a lawyer’s brief.
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Right. Subjective and situational. Good call.
A lawyers brief to me right now is worthless, but should I be falsely accused of rape…..I may place a higher value on it than I do my firewood.
Now in Haiti that could also happen, but instead of fending off the police state and needing a lawyers brief, you will probably need weapons and the support of other men who recognize the lie in order to fend off her suitors.
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So far as I can see the “mommy wars” were one phase of a cultural war to empower feminism, and we are now moving on to a new phase. The point was to recruit as many women as possible into middle-class paid work in order to break male dominance over middle-class professions. One tactic in recruiting women was to denigrate motherhood and potray housewives as oppressed rather than priviledged. Obviously there was a backlash against this from women who prefered not to work outside the home.
But that’s history. The two-income family is now the norm. Many formerly male professions are now largely female. And well-paid middle class jobs are in decline. The current phase of the feminist push is the battle to feminize the workplace. So you hear talk about making workplaces family friendly, allowing women the option to jobshare, take maternity leave, work flexible hours and go home early. And the workplace culture must be female friendly in all aspects. This has been the main focus for the last couple of decades in Europe, Australia and NZ.
As the focus moves to “family friendly” workplaces you will see feminism encouraging women to take up whatever options for flexible work are available as a way of cementing whatever concessions are granted. Opinion makers are increasingly talking about how difficult it is to have it all and saying employers need to do more to support working mothers.
Part of this new emphasis is a new tolerance for women who choose to take some time off work and stay home with the children for a while. The emphasis is now on female choice.
I expect the trend towards offshoring and a casual and part-time workplace will continue, meaning fewer well-paid jobs for full-time males. Europe and America seem set for a decade of economic stagnation, and as baby boomers retire from well-paid full time jobs their positions will increasingly be eliminated and replaced with lower paid casual and part time positions.
So I expected that women priviledged enough to be supported by a husband will be a declining minority, and the norm will be to work fewer hours in lower paid jobs. The propaganda about flexibility will in practice translate to a workforce of casual and part-time women who make just enough to get by.
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Both groups would be better off leaving the other alone. A lot of it seems one-sided to me..it seems I see more battles started by working women knocking SAHMs for not doing enough. I’ve seen comments about SAHMs not ‘giving 100% ‘ if they use their cellphones while at the park, or if they have something ready-made in their kids’ lunches. ‘Stay home if you want, but if you do , do it right’. Heh. I rarely see SAHMs telling a working woman how to do her job. I always wonder why the hell are working women excused from all housework and cooking just because they work? They generally do very little of what they exhort SAHMs to do as part of their ‘job’. They justify messy houses and fast food by having a job. Makes little sense to me. If feminists were really about women having choices, this wouldn’t be a debate of any kind, all choices made by women would be respected as their choices, but the herd instinct has to kick in every time. Women spend truckloads of time nagging other people to make themselves feel better.
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“It is such a big distraction concoccted by elites in positions of authority to keep ordinary men perpetually mobilised for a phoney and synthetic gender war.” – poiuyt
Interesting but the war is real because it is waged by women and Feminism is a reflection of women’s (self serving) and men (chivalrous pedestalizers). Im guessing you have a theory that includes elites encouraging this war (one sided) which may have some truth but it is a battle of minds and is a reflection of men and women’s desires and was precipitated by past human behavior.
I get some of what your saying, simply reacting to Feminism can be quite foolish when you argue on their terms and don’t change your situation in a real way. However I think if you have a deep understanding of Feminism, or better yet Feminism is a movement that exposes some of the serious offenses towards men. That is men being disposable, easily shamed into anything, and the women good men bad which is what Feminism embodies. So I believe fighting Feminism does help the bigger picture if you do it right.
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“During preliminary interviews with housewives she saw that they had one thing in common: an extremely infantilized mode of behavior. Whenever the conversation didn’t go exactly as they wanted, they would become highly emotional, raise their woices, bcome irritable, cry, make unreasonable demands. They had no understanding of how to negotiate or listen to others. Their expectations of what they are owed by recruiters and employers were extremely inflated. It was obvious that inscribing themselves into the hierarchies of a workplace, curbing their highly emotional response to every slight contretemps and learning to listen to other people was going to be next to impossible for them”
This is a great quote I’ve been waiting for. I think it suggests alot about women not working in the past, the development of Feminism, and spoiled privilege in general.
Its amazing at how often housewives are so certain of the vale of their work.
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In the last few months I have made a handful of visits to the local immigration office, as I am putting my papers in order as a resident in New Zealand. During these visits, I have seen six different women manning the desk. Not a single guy.
What baffles me is why six women are needed for that particular job. You see, in all the visits I am usually in and out in less than five minutes. “Very efficient!” you may think. Except that the local office is not really an office.
It’s a “dropbox.”
What that means is that there’s a desk where you can pick up the forms you need (there are several piles for you to choose by yourself), and the ladies behind the desk will very helpfully put them in an envelope to be shipped out to Wellington the next day.
And that’s all they can do.
They don’t give advice. They don’t know the rules. They don’t even verify if you’re delivering all the right paperwork. You could give them a pile of blank paper, and they’d helpfully put it in an envelope and send it off to Wellington.
Oh, and you can pick up the returning correspondence from Wellington. Because, you know, using regular mail is hard.
Yet there they are. Ten staff (as per their website), no idea if there are any men since I’ve only seen women, putting forms in envelopes. 9 am to 3 pm, five days a week.
Unbelievable.
I wonder if there are another 10 women in Wellington putting letters answering the forms in envelopes, 9 am to 3 pm, five days a week, to send back to the local “dropbox.”
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[i]We have not yet seen a nation that has had female suffrage for a full 100 years (the US is now in its 92nd year). It is thus TBD whether a society can survive 100 years of women voting.[/i]
??
How about Australia (1902), Finland (1908) and New Zealand (1893)? Or going further back, partial female suffrage has been around for a lot longer. Women could vote in local elections in Sweden from 1862, the UK from 1869, in different US states from 1869, etc.
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