First, the Stephenie Meyer novel "Twilight" will soon be showing in theaters. Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily reports that users of online ticketing service Fandango voted "Twilight" the most anticipated new movie of the year, and that the response, 95% from women, is tremendous. Naturally, of course, no man, or certainly straight man, would willingly be caught dead watching the movie. Or undead, as the case may be. Interestingly, 42% are 25 or older, while 58% are younger than 25. The novels and movie appeals strongly to young women. The Orange County Register has an article that also suggests this is the case, that teen girls form the core readers for these types of fantasy-romance novels.
"I feel bad for my future husband," says Hammel, 16, of Mission Viejo, who says practically everyone she knows has fallen for the books. "Because he'll always be second in my heart to Edward."
What is interesting is that the news story points out how the vampire novels cater to young women's desire to never grow up. To stay young, sixteen to seventeen, without responsibilities, beautiful, and in love, forever. This is a very different view, of course, from the traditional type of romance novels, pioneered by Jane Austen, where the whole point was to grow up. To become an adult, free of the confines of childhood and the childhood home, able to act as a mature young woman, indulging in both romance (and implied sex) with her husband. Marriage and children were considered the goal — it was merely a question of finding the correct husband, and avoiding the unsuitable ones.
Certain themes pop up in the vampire novels, over and over again, as detailed in a recent Wall Street Journal article. The vampires are of course of perfect physique, washboard abs, and beautiful countenances. The vampires are all "rich" and have wealth, and often power, in their own secret societies. Interestingly, most of the novels feature byzantine politics and "treaties" with humans and fellow vampires, other supernatural creatures, that the female protagonists must navigate. The parallels to the tortuous "Mean Girl" politics of High School Girl Popularity are of course, obvious. The female protagonists of course do nothing, really, except land the most powerful, and politically influential (in the "secret society") vampire, and become the "Head Mean Girl" of the supernatural version of High School. Indeed, many of them are set in Vampire Prep Schools.
For all of feminism's chorus of changing society, it is instructive that none of these novels show the protagonist gaining a career, a skill, a family with a supportive husband, or entering into a traditionally male field where the protagonist is accepted as an equal on her own terms. No, instead what these novels provide is the vicarious thrills of being the most popular and powerful girl in school, with the Big Man on Campus as the eternal boyfriend, forever. With no adult responsibility, or anything else to intrude in the "forever now," where time and the idea of time, simply does not exist. No planning for college, no career focus, no concern about family. None of that.
It's striking, how young women want so little of what feminism offered, and indeed chose the exact opposite — updated versions of the Bronte novels, only with supernatural overtones. Contrary to Freud, we can read these novels and discover what their readers want (they certainly reward the authors well, with sales in the millions). Which is, with respect to men, perfect physiques, physical power far in excess of other men, wealth that does not require work, or a daily job, and very hierarchical, feudal style politics echoing that of female cliques in High School.
The Wall Street Journal calls this the "Alpha Male," but of course it's a Woman's idea of an Alpha Male, echoing Byron, not a Man's idea of an Alpha Male.
For most men (well, straight ones anyway), Byron would be considered a failure. While dubbed, "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," Byron was by the standards of modern men an absolute failure. He had affairs with distant cousins, a married woman (whom he treated cruelly), and was likely, bisexual, having affairs with men at College, and afterwards. He was reputed to have had an incestuous relationship with his half-sister. He sent his illegitimate daughter away to an orphanage, to the disgust of the Shelleys, who eventually broke with him over that issue (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's daughter was born prematurely and died as an infant.) None of Byron's works are much remembered today, and are only rarely read, in contrast to the Shelleys. While "Frankenstein" remains a classic, Byron's works like "Childe Harold" are forgotten.
Nevertheless, he had many affairs, was famous, and was likely the first "celebrity" in the Western World. Famous for being famous, as opposed to actually achieving anything. It's significant that he had few real friends, no real political or cultural influence, and was not an "Alpha Male" in the way that most men would understand it.
For men, Alpha Male is pretty much leadership. The man who dominates a social setting by virtue of his social network, which includes hefty doses of patronage, mentoring, decision making, and most of all, success. Not just for the Alpha Male himself, but more importantly, those in his social network. Thus, Generals Grant and Sherman, would both be considered Alpha Males, even though their sexual pairings were few, and both remained loyal and faithful to their wives. The late Coach Bill Walsh, who successfully mentored an astonishing number of NFL Head Coaches, and took over temporarily as Head Coach of Stanford, so that protege Dennis Green could become Head Coach of the Minnesota Vikings, at that time, the second Black Head Coach in the NFL would be considered by most men, as an Alpha Male. Even though Walsh was not imposing physically, or someone of stature so dominant that he controlled any room he stepped into. Nevertheless, his players and assistant coaches all felt Walsh, his system and his unique analysis, gave them the best chance to win every game. Walsh, like all successful head coaches, made it a point to expand his power and influence, by pushing for his proteges to be hired at head coaching jobs of their own.
Which points to the big difference in preferred social structures between men and at least as indicated by the vampire novels, young women. Men like "flat" social hierarchies, where hard work, leadership, and talent combined can give them opportunities to be part of a "winning team" that expands their own social network. Just as Grant and Sherman both protected each other politically, when each was at a low ebb, so too do the preferred social hierarchies of men protect against losing (since to move ahead takes risk). Achievement is measured in concrete goals accomplished — enemy cities taken, armies destroyed, supplies destroyed or rendered useless. In peacetime, games won, or items sold, or buildings constructed. All of which require cooperation, trust, and delegation of duties, indeed specialization, to accomplish anything big and worthwhile.
None of which, of course, are evident in the profoundly feminine world of the Vampire romances. There might be males in them, but they don't bear any resemblance to what most men consider "manly" anymore than Lord Byron would be any man's idea (at least any straight man's) idea of a role model. Indeed, while the relationship is paramount for the female protagonists of the Vampire romance books, for men in fantasy novels dealing with the supernatural, it is usually just an afterthought. Build an army, an alliance of trust, defeat the monster, and get the girl. All of which happen in sequence, as a result of being a supernatural Bill Walsh or William Tecumseh Sherman. Known to his troops as "Uncle Billy" and in the years after, in the habit of quietly assisting his former troops with food and money if they called at his house. For the girls in the Vampire books, it is of course the reverse. Get the brooding, Byronic hunky vampire guy, and then get the rewards, such as social power, eternal beauty, and popularity.
It is not wrong for men and women to want different things, in different order. Profound gender differences drive each culture, regardless if they are acknowledged openly or not. Yes young women seem to have decisively rejected feminism. But the problem lies in the current situation where men and women's fundamental interests are not aligned. In Jane Austen's day, as lamentable as the restrictions on women's lives were, the fundamental interests of both men and women, to make a good, life-long match for marriage, were aligned (at least for the middling Gentry that Austen wrote about). The economic growth of the 19th Century, and that of the Twentieth, brought that alignment about to the Western masses, down to the most ordinary of persons. While men and women may have thought about society differently, had different perspectives, and wanted different intermediate things, their end goal of making a happy marriage, and having successful, happy children, was shared by both, and society as a whole.
Now, there is a huge mis-match in the relationship market, and nothing speaks more to it than the Vampire novels. Young women want the hunkiest of hunks, natural of course, but also a very hierarchical society where losers and winners have already been picked, and no one changes out of their status, ever. It is a society frozen in Amber, fixed with as the Wall Street Journal describes, "atavism" of a backward, feudal nature. Not just in the original, Bram Stoker version of Dracula, but all the updated versions, from the Sookie Stackhouse series to the Laurel K. Hamilton novels, feature very feudalistic societies made up of "Kings" and "Queens" who "run things" like a combination of the Borgias mixed with the Sopranos mixed with South American Drug lords, with a supernatural twist. Societies made for pretty young women, but not for ambitious young men.
As these young women grow up, they are more likely to demand these hierarchical societies, which advantage pretty young women and place at severe disadvantage ambitious young men. They are likely to prefer older men, who will be in competition with their male peers for their favors. After all, a great deal of the Vampire fantasy is that of the older man, who looks younger. All the vampires are very much older and more experienced than the female protagonists. Politically, this equates to a high degree of support for socialism, among young women. Because socialism provides a frozen-in-amber society, with influential and powerful families running things by design. It is no accident that every socialist economy is plagued by scores of young men, outside the margins of economic success, looking to trump aristocratic control by extreme violence. This is as true in the banlieus of France as it is in the favelas of Brazil.
Among other things, this explains the infamous Gender Gap. Why single women in particular prefer more Leftist, socialist politics than men. It is really a preference for a stable aristocracy, which makes sense given how the different sexes view romantic success.
As these young women grow older, the habits and views of men they have created in adolescence, of course, are unlikely to prove a happy template for solid, stable relationships. In real life, as opposed to fiction, relationships with Byronic bad boys rarely end happily. Theodore Dalrymple notes in his "Life at the Bottom" how both his female patients and his nurses, preferred violent, abusive bad-boys, over stable, decent men. That they only grew out of their attachment to the bad boys when menopause hit. Given the weakening influence of parents, Churches, and other purveyors of traditional social values, and the strengthening influence of peers and the media environment, this is not a happy development.
It would be a mistake, of course, to blame the authors. They simply see a market, and fulfill the demand in the marketplace. No, the blame is entirely that of the social system that allows the mis-match, between young women wanting what only a very few of their male peers can be (impossibly handsome and strong, impossibly rich, impossibly mature, impossibly socially powerful), and the reality of who most of their male peers really are: the lineup of geeks at the dance from the classic 1980's John Hughes film, "Sixteen Candles."
Many or perhaps most of these young boys who are "geeks" can grow up to be successful men in business, the military, or other careers. A look at actor Anthony Michael Hall then and now, is instructive. None of them can grow up to be "Edward Cullen" of the "Twilight" novels. Only a very few men can even approach that combination of physique, power, status, and Byronic brooding bad boy intensity. Perhaps the innate desire to have these qualities in men leads young women to indulge what Roissy in DCM has called the "soft polygamy" of major urban centers in the West.
The real scary thing, however, is that we may be seeing the result play out already, in Japan. Not as a Godzilla movie, but the depopulation of Japan. The CIA World Factbook reports that Japan's Total Fertility Rate is 1.22 (2.1 is considered replacement rate). Japanese women, like their American and European counterparts, would rather chase after the closest thing to Edward Cullen society has to offer, or indulge in consumerism, than marry their male counterparts and have children. Perhaps the failure of the economic success model — the old heroic myths where the male heroes assembled an alliance and slew the monster, saving the day and getting the girl, is responsible for the new reality of the Japanese Salary Man.
Recall the link at the top of the post? The "hodo-hodo" slacker generation of workers in their twenties and early thirties do not want to be promoted. They find the extra money (not as much as before) not worth it. Certainly not worth all the extra work and time away from their own activities. Given how much of Japanese productivity is built upon (largely unpaid) extra work by supervisors, the refusal of Japanese men to take promotions is telling. In part, the young men cite previous lay-offs, where the life-long work meant nothing during budget cuts and firings. But buried between the lines is the nugget that Japanese men, the younger ones at least, no longer believe that wealth and power that is achievable from a Salary Man job will lead to a family. This is the natural outcome, perhaps, of women's increasing power and status in society.
If women have independence, freedom, and their own wealth and power, then they can demand the Byronic bad-boy, and settle into single status, permanently. Only an extraordinary man, unlikely to be found among Salary Men, could persuade them to give up their independence, and it would require the extraordinary levels achievable only in supernatural fantasy, with feudal "secret Kings" and "Queens" living among ordinary people. It takes an "Edward Cullen" to get married, in other words, and for most men, knowledge of that requirement is a reason to stop caring. Stop caring about advancement in work. Stop caring about promotion, responsibility, more money. Leisure time and amusements rule. Much like the life of "Chuck" in the NBC-TV series, before the arrival of the beautiful secret agent.
Western society is predicated on a simple but historically effective bargain between the sexes. Men compete to acquire wealth, power, and status, in a relatively "flat" and open competition, with risks and rewards and social dynamism, which also implies that yes, men (and women) can lose power and status. Women accept this part of the bargain, and in return get much greater freedom of movement and persons relative to other societies, and the protection of men against threats internal and external. It's why Wyoming and New Zealand, rough frontier societies, subject to frequent reversals of fortune, both gave women the right to vote in 1869.
The corollary of course is that few men are priced entirely out of the marriage/relationship market, and no women can really "share" the few men who can approach the fantasy of Edward Cullen, the man who Byronically dominates them and (just as importantly) other men. Generally, societies that have men along the line of Byron tend not to be romantic utopias, but more along the lines of Idi Amin's Uganda, or Mobutu's Zaire. The classic, "Big Man" society with a Big Man ruling everything, and resentful, angry men in the Bush plotting revenge and overthrow of the Big Man.
In the current consumerist plenty, young men are not squatting out in the Bush, planning to overthrow the few men who approach Edward Cullen. Western (and that would include Japanese) society is simply too rich and filled with diversions, from the NFL to X-Boxes, for that to happen. Now. But in a prolonged, and lasting depression, with female preference still set and lagging, for the fantasy of an Edward Cullen, and willing to "share" the few that approach the fantasy?
Nothing good can come of that. Which is a prospect truly scary.
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26 comments:
It seems to me that this cuts both ways. Both sexes have 'unrealistic expectations of beauty.' Guys, even nerd guys, are also shooting for the babes, and often overlook good, attractive enough, mentally stable women who would make good partners and mothers.
I think all of this will go away when serious hard times are upon us.
Perhaps Anon, though the complaint of guys post-College, in workplaces that are un-sexy, i.e. engineering, IT, things of that nature, is that they get no dates at all, due to the nature of the competition.
Average attractive women in the urban centers, say NYC, or Boston, or LA, have not only their same age male peers competing for them, but also older guys who have a power-status advantage over younger men. So a woman of average attractiveness, about what you would find in the local mall, in her twenties, will have far more suitors for her favors than a man of merely average status/power/looks/dominance has.
It's argued that this creates an unequal sexual marketplace. Even a woman of average attractiveness can entertain offers from a more testosterone heavy guy, if she is willing to share, and increasingly women seem to be willing.
Then, in her mid-thirties, she finds the situation reversed. Her peers who found her attractive 7-10 years ago, now pursue younger women. Her dating pool is filled with men who have limited social skills and are perceived as "boring." There has not been a period of years of intense bonding through a monogamous relationship, releasing hormones to help cement a bond. Instead the effect of many partners has been to reduce the effect of the hormones for both men and women. Some researchers have suggested that this is why "first love" is often the most intense -- the hormones effect is undiluted through multiple partners and learned behavior (to discard their effect). It's true that women in NYC for example, have reported higher lifetime partners (15) vs. the national average (9). Many of course can report around 40 -- note that the national and NYC averages include older women from a time of much more resticted sexual behavior.
I'm not sure that a period of economic retrenchment would address this imbalance in the sexual marketplace in the twenties that seems to be at the heart of the West's problems. As long as women have relative to men, equal earnings, and the power to demand, politically, equal earnings, then they have the independence to entertain multiple offers, from men their own age, and the larger pool of men (due to declining demographics) of unattached men in their thirties desiring a woman in the twenties age range (greater attractiveness, fertility, fewer partners) that for men are more desireable.
Whiskey, I think anonymous needs to blame both sides, not because of any observation, but because noting that women are the ones who ended marriage and brought back harems is abhorrent to men, who are still following the dead rules of chivalry, and women, who have embraced their new found freedom but have flinched from any concept of responsibility, old or new.
It looks to me that the game is rigged at the moment. With the current "sexual harassment" laws, male managers have responsibility for women employees but no power over them, something akin to modern "marriage". Why wouldn't it be hard to find someone stupid enough to volunteer for such a position?
Japanese women, like their American and European counterparts, would rather chase after the closest thing to Edward Cullen society has to offer, or indulge in consumerism, than marry their male counterparts and have children.
What is interesting about Japan is that it is a modern industrialized country that did not have a feminist movement. As such, Japanese society remains very traditional about gender roles.
Many Japanese women refuse to marry because they (often quite reasonably) view marriage as a raw deal for women e.g. women are expected to stop working after marriage & become housewives, subject themselves to the will of their in-laws, Japanese husbands do not play a major role in child rearing or in family life as they are expected to devote themselves to their employers (a schedule in which the husband leaves home early, comes back late at night, spends weekends and other leisure time schmoozing with coworkers or catching up on sleep is common).
When I asked the women I met when I was working in Japan why they were uninterested in marriage, they frequently pointed at their mothers in marriages where they barely saw their husbands, had to care for critical, demanding mother-in-laws who made their lives miserable, had largely raised their children alone, had no career of their own and said "I don't want that".
So in a society modern enough that women are educated & can find work so they don't need a husband to support them, but with no feminism force society to accommodate women who want career & family and expect men to be hands-on dads & help out in the domestic sphere, you have this dynamic where marriage and birth rates plunge.
The only way this is going to reverse itself is if there is major readjustment in the attitudes of Japanese men, employers, and the government. So it's not looking good for Japan.
However, as you pointed out, feminism leads to its own problems with regard to declining marriage rates. However, I do believe that the changes it wrought made marriage & childbearing more attractive (i.e. less costly) to women - if the US had the same expectations of wives as Japan does, our marriage/birth rates would also be in the toilet.
It's not surprising that the European countries with the most traditional views of women have the lowest birth rates as well.
Yes young women seem to have decisively rejected feminism.
They've rejected calling themselves feminist. But I think so many feminist ideas are now so deeply ingrained in the culture that they are not considered feminist, but "normal" or framed in a softer way ("You go, girl!", "Girl power!") especially for girls middle-class or above.
For all of feminism's chorus of changing society, it is instructive that none of these novels show the protagonist gaining a career, a skill, a family with a supportive husband, or entering into a traditionally male field where the protagonist is accepted as an equal on her own terms.
Yes, which is why I think your hostility towards shows like Buffy and Veronica Mars is misplaced - whatever their faults, the primary role of the main female characters was to work for justice and help, protect, & defend others and they regularly wrestled with difficult moral dilemmas, sacrificed their happiness for the greater good, and embraced unpopularity as the cost of doing the right thing. Compared to current crap like the novels you mentioned, or shows like Gossip Girl, where bored rich kids basically babble about clothes, jockey to rule the popular clique, and make-out w/ each other, those two shows had a lot to recommend them.
-- It's not surprising that the European countries with the most traditional views of women have the lowest birth rates as well.
Anonymous is on to something here. (But would he please pick a handle?)
I can see how in Japan and in traditional countries like Italy, Spain, or Eastern Europe, some women may have gone on "marriage-strike." Knowing women, I can say with great assurance that it's commonplace for a senior woman (the mother-in-law in this case) to treat the junior woman (the son's wife) horridly. It's no wonder that when women have ability to make their own living, they prefer to live alone or with their parents than in her husband's household.
There was a study out recently that showed how most women hate having female bosses, and that many female supervisors tend to mistreat their female employees in very capricious ways.
Of course, this marriage-strike is not the whole picture, although it does add an interesting factor I haven't considered yet.
Other factros, certainly are economic opportunities that influence some women to chase "bad boys" per Whiskey, even if I think he overstates the phenomenon.
And there is also Sailer's "Affordable Family Formation" theory of cheap real estate being marriage & children-friendly, and ther is feminism, and immigration's role in surpressing native birthrates, and otehr factors.
Yes, PA, marriage in a traditional nation is a bad deal for women, particularly the mother-in-law issue. However, what is notable is that in highly mobile, atomized nations like the US, marriage is replaced by single motherhood.
In 1965, the White single mother rate was 4%, now it is 41%. In Britain, it is over 50%, with similar numbers in the Scandinavian nations.
This is happening even though expectations of marriage and roles are far different. Look at the reaction to Todd Palin among feminists. He should be celebrated -- a guy who took time off to care for the kids so Sarah Palin could continue her career. IIRC he took a year off during the Gubernatorial transition. Yet feminists attacked Palin as some sort of Neanderthal mainly because of his class and status, which is blue collar.
What is instructive is that younger, single women find Palin herself a negative figure, based on her personal life. Their objection: the kids and the husband, the latter lacking in status and prestige. IMHO a huge indicator of a preference for social status above all others given financial independence and great social and physical mobility.
After all, in America the contact with mothers-in-law is limited to maybe every other Thanksgiving. Men are expected to shoulder household tasks and surveys show that they do indeed in most marriages.
Anon 11:18 -- My hostility towards Buffy (in particular) and to a lesser extent Veronica Mars is that the model they show is one of single motherhood. Eschewing the Todd Palin types who can provide emotional support the heroines choose the most "female Alpha" type of guys, who are the most physically dominant, and Byronic Bad Boy in character.
The problem is that this cultural model is both a shaper (in the atomized lives of modern men and women) and a reflector of deep cultural changes. Pursuing Byronic Bad Boy vampires does not work in real life, and tends to produce a generation of single mothers. With a society of either gangsta thugs to nerdy isolates sprinkled with pickup artists.
Buffy, in particular, did not fight for anything in the end but her own social superiority, and sense of Yuppie elite entitlement with powers and the murderous Byronic bad boy to validate her existence. Her vampires were neither good nor men, existing on a plane of pure power and status, with "exciting violence." Buffy in the last season repeatedly wanted the old killer-Spike filled with violence to return, and had little objection to having sex with the character after he raped her. Nor did she object to Spike's murderous past, she seemed to enjoy it. [Buffy early in the show's run embraced a moral code, but the show's weakness was that morality, ethics, altruism, and social connections all went out the window whenever a Byronic Bad Boy over-rode all other elements in Buffy's life, including family and friends.]
Veronica Mars was not as bad, but still in the character of Logan had the lead falling into fairly stupid Byronic Bad Boy relationships, that made the character look stupid and driven by her need for a classically physically dominant man who also has social power.
My objection to this (in common with Buffy btw) is that it practically guarantees a "race to the bottom" in male behavior. Any young man in adolescence watching those shows will conclude that the ONLY thing that matters is physical dominance, violence, and social status, with a good heaping helping of humiliation of other, lesser men. Given that Buffy (and nearly all the other female characters on the show) made that their criteria, and Veronica Mars did also.
Event the most physically slight and slender guy can use tools to inflict a great deal of violence. Whether it is Columbine, or Virginia Tech, a "race to the bottom" is guaranteed to produce that kind of behavior when mental illness slips the bounds of rational calculation. And at the other end, men will quickly adopt thug-behavior and skirting the limits of retaliation/punishment. Marvin Gaye in 1965 sang songs of sweet altruistic love, and in the present, rappers boast of sexual prowess and humiliating rivals by having sex with the rivals girlfriends and wives.
In my post on Pitcairn Island I describe a real-life example of how this "race to the bottom" actually works out, when men engage in this competition, net result all but one of the men murdered each other in a brutal fight over the women.
I think there has been a big shift in the overall (individuals vary of course) criteria of female choice. Dalrymple's books detailing his experiences, Buffy and Veronica Mars, the Gossip Girl shows, the Vampire equivalents, the negative reaction to Palin's personal life, all show a big shift to just a few attributes in men that are guaranteed to produce a disastrous male "race to the bottom" in one form or another.
A race to the bottom, moreover, that threatens the underpinnings of Western society -- cooperation, trust, innate adherence to social norms above and beyond "legalisms" of what one can get away with.
The post and the comments are fascinating, but it's as though I've entered an alien world.
Young people I know are getting married, planning families eventually, and are members of a large kinship network. Are there tensions? Sure. But there are in all human relationships. What's the deal?
I do know single women and they seem singularly sad to me. It's obvious they'd like to be married. My feeling is that if you want marriage badly enough you have to go after it methodically. And you have to be willing to "settle" for something out of your comfort zone.
In my case, my husband is ten years younger than me. He homeschooled our son and was a landscape artist. He held lots of odd jobs and then went back to systems analysis when the rubber hit the road and we needed high school and college tuition.
The Baron is quite a manly nerd. He is persistent, kind, and has a truly amazing stamina. He has the most integrity of anyone I know. His son wants to be like him (except for his singing voice) and looks forward to founding his own family someday.
Fortunately for me, the B has always preferred zaftig women. He thinks men who want centerfold women are doomed to the loneliness of fantasy.
One thing you fail to mention: women who have many sexual partners over the course of their lives are much more likely to die of diseases of the organs of reproduction. Cancer of the vagina used to be rare but it's not any more.
The Fem libs hide under the rug this information as it relates to breast cancer. Any young woman who has a first degree female relative who had BRCA should *not* have an abortion of her first pregnancy. Failure to carry it to term will increase her own chances for BRCA by her 30's.
A couple of years ago two teenagers won settlements out of court from abortion centers in Washington state because they were not "counseled" about this risk during their interview. Both had mothers with BRCA and both aborted. They stand a much higher chance of developing BRCA themselves now.
The old way -- "going to visit Aunt Matilda" -- and giving the baby up for adoption if you can't care for it ensured the long-term sexual health of the mother. At least it did so if she didn't proceed to have multiple sexual partners.
Mother Nature is harsh.
Of the reasons so many urban people delay marriage and children, I think Vampire novels are a bit down the list.
Simply put, secular societies dont effectively breed at replacement levels. Religous one's do. If you have to get married to have sex, you get married. Kids end up being a consequence of marriage because the woman will want them and so will the man after the thrill of the chase for sex is gone. Your married, there is only one person you are going to fuck that night. Whats next? A couple of little ones that you will fall in love with, naturally. Maybe even a third when the first two get to be teenagers because you pine for the days when the first two were tots (weren't they cute? remember how they used to.......lets have ONE more before we are too old). The church-going couple now have three.
The biggest feminist I knew in high school, a real "I can do anything the boys can do, but better" exemplar turned into a Jesus freak and has 6 kids that she homeschools. When a pal told me that, I literally refused to believe her, but I looked online and there she was............with six kids. I'd have believed I could have grown six more legs and metamorphasized into a spider a la Kafka than believed she'd have done that. Religion is powerful.
If you are secular, you have adult toys made to rigorous standards in factories, not a cucumber from the fridge, DVD-quality porn with girls and guys that look like real models, a comfortable living space, websites like AdultFriendFinder that will hook you up with others who want "no-strings-attatched-sex" and nothing else, nightclubs, Oil of Olay to stave off the years, and other diversions. These things can keep you from getting married until you are really fading yourself. Even if you do tie the knot, you only have enough time for about one kid.
The religious couple down the street have four. See where this leads? You get outbred.
If it weren't for immigration and the tendency of blacks to vote liberal...........just amongst whites, this nation would be leeching very much rightward at this point. I mean we'd have presidents like Pat Buchanan. Could you imagine if the GOP could get 50% of the black vote, and there had been no Immigration Reform Act of 1965? Amongst whites, things would be getting VERY conservative by now, because secular whites just have not kept up with the religous ones in the mating game. I'd wager the average Christian family has about 2.5 kids, the average secular one has about 1.5 kids. Two generations and one group would dominate the other-----and the losing groups children (people love a winner), would latch onto the larger group to be part of the "winning" side.
Great civilizations have flowered and died before (Greece, Babylon, Rome, Egypt, etc.). Perhaps ours will be no different. I hope future historians five hundred years down the line note more about us than our awful movies.
Love your blog, I discovered it only a short while back from your Belmont club comments, resonate with a lot of what I've read and tried to synthetize as my own theories - though you make a much better job of what I ever could do on my own. I'll definitively follow you.
On a somewhat related note, check this :
Unmarried women put Obama over the tophttp://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=80246
Btw, re anonymous above, he's quite right, but I feel his points only complement yours.
Longman has written convingly (for me at least) about that.
A few more links to go along anony, easier for me than actually backing my ideas with arguments!
The Global Baby Bust
http://tinyurl.com/2qjw6
Fertility, Faith, & the Future of the West
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2007/003/4.28.html
The Baby Gap: Explaining Red and Blue
http://www.isteve.com/BabyGap.htm
Faith, fertility and American dominance
The Empty Cradle by Phillip Longman
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FI08Aa01.html (NB : "Spengler" writes a lot about faith and demography, cf.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GK01Aa01.html
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GK08Aa01.html )
plus a few others by Longman which I didn't bookmark.
Kevin beat me to it, I was going to mention that 70% of unmarried women voted for Obama. I always knew that when single motherhood became the norm Dems would become the monopoly party. Women are now sharing alpha males and bad boys, having their children and avoiding betas alltogether who would have made good family men. The Dems will give single mothers a standard of living that is equal to what it would have been if they settled for a beta, although their children will be worse off in many ways.
I am a nice guy (who has no desire in learning PUA skills) and have had so many women put me in the friend zone through the years. I have stayed in touch with them through the years. They all became single mothers and all with no exceptions get some type of welfare supplement.
One woman I know decided she wanted to be a mother at age 21. She said "I'm going to go to the club, find the best looking guy I can find and F him". That's exactly what she did. She now has two children from two random alpha male fathers and get's rewarded with a ton of welfare. She eats better with food stamps than any working single man I know. Her son is already showing criminal tendencies. Yes, she voted for Obama.
I have other stories more extreme than this, including women I know who will only date men who are convicted criminals.
I don't worry too much about these shows having a major effect on people's real life behavior - most people do not confuse the mere depiction of something as an endorsement of it. The relationships you find dysfunctional are portrayed this way by the writers on purpose - they are not supposed to be healthy or sweet love stories. They are, in keeping with the times, trying to showcase the seamier sides of human behavior.
For example, Buffy becomes romantically involved with Spike at a point when she is depressed and suicidal and she explicitly describes her relationship with him as self-destructive and something she's ashamed of. Most characters disapprove of it. She ends it when she gets over her grief & stops wanting to die. The show doesn't glamorize their relationship at all, which came off as joyless and claustrophobic most of the time.
It was controversial among fans, but moral of that storyline - "play with bad boys and you get burned" - (Spike's response to being dumped is obsessive stalking and an unsuccessful attempt at rape) was remarkable by how realistic it was. Even as far back as the 50's, a favorite movie trope is the violent amoral "bad boy" who is reformed and domesticated by the "good girl", whose love redeems him, which rarely happens in real life.
Here, when love sours and things don't go his way, the bad boy realistically responds with violence against the girl. Loving her does not redeem him because feeling love or passion is not the same as having morals - he's bad and that's that.
He's only somewhat redeemed by literally having a soul & conscience implanted in him (not having a soul being this show's real marker of who is good & who is evil) because he's horrified by what he did and by choosing to fight on the side of good (although thankfully, post-rape attempt, he & Buffy never have sex again).
There's always the danger with well-written characters and stories that viewers and readers will sympathize or rationalize too much, especially if the bad boy has a painful past ("He's not bad, he's misunderstood/it's a cry for help!). But I would hate to not have thoughtful explorations of the stupid things we often do onscreen.
But none of this is new - the flip side of Austen's sensible heroines is Emily Bronte's moody, vengeful, violent, obsessive Heathcliff, who has somehow come down to us as a great romantic hero although the book itself pulls no punches about what kind of person he is.
Politically, this equates to a high degree of support for socialism, among young women. Because socialism provides a frozen-in-amber society, with influential and powerful families running things by design.
You're overthinking things, Whiskey. Socialism sounds good, it has nearly unanimous support in education and the press, and supporting it makes one feel generous and virtuous. That is why women like it, not because of a desire for a feudal mating arrangement.
Lawful, you're probably right. I keep forgetting about the dynamics of the mating game.
Kevin, thanks for that link. Yes it's pretty compelling.
Good points various anons.
Dymphna -- you are quite correct. Poor Christina Applegate, a truly beautiful woman, would have been better served had she had a kid in her twenties. Her mother had breast cancer also. I did not know that about the settlement. Tragic. It's best not to cheat biology.
Which brings me to my next point. I think Buffy and other female empowerment shows in relationships depicted give women wrong ideas. Contrary to anon 8:14, part of the problem is that peers and media/entertainment like Buffy drive choices. Men need these lessons too, because distance from working parents, clueless and PC-driven schools, and toxic media/entertainment give men and women unrealistic expectations about each other and bad decision making models.
Sadly, Buffy and Spike have sex again, implied off-screen (but fans got it and Whedon confirmed it) in one of the last episodes.
I agree that Vampire novels and such are not the cause, but another indicator of a lot of problems between men and women which I think is at the heart of the Western weakness.
Women of course face far higher risks in making bad choices in men than men in women. I just think back to Dalyrmple's story about the 17 year old patient who replied it was "sexist" to suggest that she as a woman was weaker than the abusive boyfriend who broke her arm and would be better off without that person in her life.
Two things, Whiskey. I think people are confused about the tv shows and movies. They are important not because women try to follow suit, but because the tv shows and movies are trying (successfully) to follow the women and act in a way the viewers will find "realistic".
Second, I think your last comment should be expanded. Men are far more at risk when choosing to deal with women, so long as they follow the "rules". It is a fact that the courts can and will ruin a man who has done nothing wrong, who has been the very definition of a "gentleman". Gives a real kick to the race to the bottom. Pushed from above, pulled from below, how long can chivalry survive such an environment?
I love the part about Byron. After reading Obama's bio, I am convinced that Obama's big appeal is tied into this post, that Obama has presented a narrative of himself as a Byronic hero, which is why the single women swoon over him and vote for him in droves.
"For example, Buffy becomes romantically involved with Spike at a point when she is depressed and suicidal and she explicitly describes her relationship with him as self-destructive and something she's ashamed of. Most characters disapprove of it. She ends it when she gets over her grief & stops wanting to die. The show doesn't glamorize their relationship at all, which came off as joyless and claustrophobic most of the time."
All that stuff is just the rationalizations that woman use.
Teens are impressionable, but even teen women are women... and their natural inclination is to prefer men who will "go the distance." I have a friend in academia who was rather incredulous about the "free love" orientation of the sixties generation, and ultimately decided that one of the major factors in the advance of "new left" politics was the desire of young men to get laid as often as they liked, with as few "strings" as possible. To accomplish this it was necessary to convince young women that they were part of a "movement" and that their duty to the movement included the provision of unencumbered sexual intercourse. In other words it was a scam.
I suppose that the reason Ayers and Dohrn ultimately got married is that they realized very few people outside of their closed sect would actually be able to tolerate them. So they were just optimizing. It worked out well for them I guess, even if they helped to deceive a gullible generation... or two.
Free Love dates back at least to 1848 and the Oneida Community, which practiced group marriage. And yes, it worked out just about how you'd expect.
Not only can we see the detrimental effects these developments have on our societies (and men in general, as the prime loosing faction in the game), but even from a literary standpoint we are talking about truly bad things here.
"Twilight" is basically female wish-fulfillment fan fiction, full of completely shallow characters (who never really grow in depth), centered around a Mary-Sue of the worst kind and a supernatural being for whose love a compelling reason is never given.
More so, the characters also never face true challenges. The Twilight vampire type is immortal, wealthy, has a superhuman physique and is, quite frankly, indestructable. From a standpoint of character development and story suspense, those vampires and the world they roam in are about as interesting as a heap of bricks. Nothing of true impact is ever done with them (which is already symbolized through the first novel: its 600 pages could just as well have been 300, so little does truly happen).
Sorry Whiskey, for taking this comment thread into this direction, but I felt it had to be said. It's bad fiction, with bad effects.
I completely agree Wiredgrenadier and look for my post on Twilight soon.
It is bad fiction, and not only bad in it's own internal dramatic structure and choice of characters, but destructive to teen girls. The boyfriend character is essentially an older, controlling man who merely looks young but is not. Who in turn isolates the "heroine" from the possibilities of her life including College and career and eventual family and children and all that makes up life.
Thank you, Whiskey. Reading your blog has been a great experience so far, and I'm usually not the one to throw around praise.
As for Twilight, a rather humorous take on it as well as a very telling quote from the actor who plays Edward Cullen in the upcoming movie:
http://forum.spacebattles.com/showpost.php?p=3849618&postcount=54
Thanks Wiredgrenadier. I hope you enjoy my latest post.
I think the reason why females prefer stratified society is because in a stratified society you don't make the mistake of shunning or putting down somebody who can rise up. You are always keeping your option open to work upwards, to the correct people.
Add that to the fact that women see themselves as always right, plus the idea that they can do no wrong.
Have you tried to get a woman to apologise _sincerely_?
They become the ultimate losers, when they think that every guy not up to their standards is a "loser", for the very fact that the guys they see as "winners" are not going to be the guys that could give a rat's ass about them in the future when the girl has outlived her utility of social proof and sex.
Then again, given the way they've treated guys who would have behaved properly with them, maybe they deserve the players.
Thanks so much for this post, pretty helpful data.
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