Saturday, February 26, 2011

Let Them Eat P#$&%

Everyone knows that young men today don‘t have it so good. Mark Regnerus agrees. Link here.

Young women are racking up impressive achievements in school and on the job. By comparison, young men seem to be a slacker generation.

Regnerus describes the plight of young men: “Their financial prospects are impaired—earnings for 25- to 34-year-old men have fallen by 20 percent since 1971. Their college enrollment numbers trail women's: Only 43 percent of American undergraduates today are men. Last year, women made up the majority of the work force for the first time. And yet there is one area in which men are very much in charge: premarital heterosexual relationships.

"When attractive women will still bed you, life for young men, even those who are floundering, just isn't so bad.”

Let’s see if we understand this correctly. In most of the activities that denote manly success in the civilized world, men are losing out. Their manly pride, such as it is, cannot be in very good shape. God will punish me for saying it, but  you don't feel like more of a man if you are getting beaten by a woman.

But, don’t feel so bad, Regnerus tells young men. They get to receive a consolation prize. They receive the booby prize or the booty prize, or both.

But, let’s try to be more serious . Let’s be historical. As I reflected on this dire reality, I had a vision. It came to me from 18th century France.

In my vision a courtier barges into Queen Marie Antoinette’s salon. He is at his wits end.

He exclaims to the Queen: “Angry young men are marching on the palace. They have no jobs; they have no career prospects; no woman would ever marry them; they might never have a family. These men are hungry. And we just ran out of cake.“

The Queen looks up from her needlepoint and declares: “Well then, let them eat p#$&%!”

Aside from the fact that this sounds like it would make a pretty good Super Bowl add, it has a more serious point. Most if not all men want more out of life than cheap sex.

To think that men can be bought off with cheap sex is grossly insulting.

Men might console themselves with cheap sex when it is offered. They are unlikely to reject a woman who offers it, but most of them, I hope, do not think that they a woman’s willingness to perform a sexual favor for them makes them alpha males.

All of this notwithstanding, Regnerus is right when he says that the terms of the transaction called hooking up are markedly friendly to men and unfriendly to women.

In his words: “But what many young men wish for—access to sex without too many complications or commitments—carries the day. If women were more fully in charge of how their relationships transpired, we'd be seeing, on average, more impressive wooing efforts, longer relationships, fewer premarital sexual partners, shorter cohabitations, and more marrying going on. Instead, according to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (which collects data well into adulthood), none of these things is occurring. Not one. The terms of contemporary sexual relationships favor men and what they want in relationships, not just despite the fact that what they have to offer has diminished, but in part because of it. And it's all thanks to supply and demand.”

I would only qualify the point by saying that these women are allowing men to believe that they are in charge. It’s a way of lulling them into complacency while women are eating their lunch.

There are many reasons why women might hookup. Most of them are bad for women. I have often outlined them, and I hope that my arguments have resonated for some women.

Now, we know that hooking up might also be a ploy to trick men into thinking that they are more manly than they are. While they are sitting back feeling like the ultimate dudes, they are losing their competitive spark. If they do not have to work to have sex, if they do not have to expend any energy to get laid, then they are going to be less capable competitors.

Of course, it may also be that meaningless impersonal sex is the best that this slacker generation has to offer.

11 comments:

Robert Mitchell Jr. said...

Why would we think they are even "eating p#$&%"? The statistics we have show more male virgins then female. Given how those numbers are collected (only way is to ask, with no way to calibrate for the social pressures that mock a man virgin, and a women with a dozen partners) it's probably a Big gap. Didn't you post about the young "lady" and her tell all thesis? Were there any "low status" men in there? It seems clear to me that 10% of the Men are getting 90% of the Women. Made worse by the fact that the only "coming of age" activity left to Men (All others being overrun by women, who see any private male space as discrimination) is losing your virginity, "Becoming a Man".

Anonymous said...

TO: Robert Mitchell Jr., et al.
RE: How About Another....

the only "coming of age" activity left to Men....is losing your virginity, "Becoming a Man". -- Robert Mitchell Jr.

....standard.

Becoming a combat-arms soldier.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier. -- Samuel Johnson]

Dennis said...

Question. Does there not come a time when there are so many people (women) with degrees that degrees lose status and applicability for getting and maintaining a job? It becomes simple economics, large supply low demand.
Question. When the church pews are full of so many of the same kind of people does not the ability to think outside the box become prevalent?
Question. Does innovation usually come from the minds of those wrapped up in the gratification of work as a status symbol?
Question. What happens when men finally change what it means to succeed and become successful?
Question. What happens when men decide that they have no stake in this society and move in another direction?
I think that we are allowing a certain type of woman to dictate what it is to be a man and the vast majority of men are seeking a better way. I have to say that I am not all that worried.
I do agree with Chuck that going into the military, for me to avoid being drafted, was a great experience in growing up and finding out there was nothing I could not accomplish if I put my mind to it. Discipline is not a dirty word. It is how one becomes truly successful.

Dennis said...

Less prevalent. I was doing an ad lib solo and I hit a spot where I went double time in my mind. I mentioned to someone after that my mind had exceed my ability to keep up with it. I don't think the audience or the band had the slight idea.

David Foster said...

Dennis..."Does there not come a time when there are so many people (women) with degrees that degrees lose status and applicability for getting and maintaining a job?"

It's pretty silly that people with degrees in some squishy-soft subject actually think that status should accrue to them as a result thereof...people observed that historically, people with degrees made more money and got more career success, but you can't drive very long by looking in the rear-view mirror. The current outsourcing of status determinations to college admissions officer (and, to a much lesser extent, college professors) is hugely damaging and cannot be allowed to continue.

Although it's not only women who accrue trivial degrees and expect to get status therefrom.

Robert Mitchell Jr. said...

Ah, Chuck, the military too has been overrun by women, yes? And with it, an end to hazing, lest your career end, as the Captain of the Enterprise saw, yes? And more and more drones, for the Democrats will use any causalities to wave the bloody shirt and demand surrender and the deaths of millions...

Anonymous said...

TO: Robert Mitchell Jr., et al.
RE: An Additional Thought....

....on your idea that getting 'laid' makes a 'boy' into a 'man'.

That's allowing women to define what a man is.

Men need to be able to define what a man is. Not women. Otherwise, you're playing into their hand. And we've seen enough of what that leads to.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[The greatest challenge in Life is NOT to be better than someone else. It's to be better than yourself.]

Anonymous said...

TO: Robert Mitchell Jr.
RE: Women in the Military

Your reading skills lack something. Either that or your comprehension.

Better re-read my comment about....

Combat-Arms Soldier

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[For more information, please re-read this message.]

Robert Mitchell Jr. said...

Yes, Chuck, thus my line about the Captain of the Air Craft Carrier Enterprise. Who is a "Combat-arms" solider in a war with no front lines? All that being a man gets you in today's military is more tours of combat, because women, not being allowed to be "Combat-Arms", eat up the shore and other non-combat billets, so guys go from Afghanistan to Iraq, with no stateside tour to unwind. But it's still not "male space", as we saw in Talehook, and with the Captain of the Enterprise. Too many female FOBITS around.....

Anonymous said...

TO: Robert Mitchell Jr.
RE: Uuuuuhhhhh....

....for YOUR 'information', 'squids' are not, repeat NOT, soldiers.

Let alone 'combat arms'. SEALS are something different from your run-of-the-mill 'squids'.

So a captain of a floating airport, albeit equipped with combat-oriented aircraft are not 'soldiers'. Nor are the pilots of those combat-oriented aircraft. At least not in the sense that an Airborne-Ranger, Special Fecees, Marine, infantryman, paratrooper, Recon Marine, SEAL, tanker, Scout, etc., are.

Got it?

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[If you had a life in the first place, you'll never have a mid-life crisis.]

Anonymous said...

TO: All
RE: The Truth....

....it's OUT THERE!!!!

Enjoy,

Chuck(le)
[Know your enemy. -- Sun Tzu, The Art of War]

P.S. The battle of the sexes is JUST THAT....