ChicagoMan: Men's Options vs. Women's Options
Article and comments
ChicagoMan wrote:
I heard a statement on TV the other day, not exactly sure who said it since the TV was on in the other room, but the statement had profound meaning.
"Men have it harder than women because men only have one option in life, work, whereas women have two, they can either work or find someone to support them."
...
SO HOW CAN THEIR LIVES BE MORE DIFFICULT?
This fundamental point is lost on many people.
Down in the comments section, Arden wrote:
being a woman is a hell i wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. unless he was a man.
I do not understand how anyone could sincerely believe this. Frankly, I just laughed. Perhaps that was her intention.
In response, ChicagoMan wrote this gem:
I don't uderstand how it could be hell. You are given preferential treatment in school, preferential hiring, workplaces are made to suit your needs. Work schedules, time off, all things are put into more consideration because you don't have a penis. Rape shield laws taking away a man's fundamental right to face his accuser.
The courts are in your favor, huge divorce settlements, child custody even though in many cases you couldn't even support the child without the massive child support payments (which are a testament to why the man should get custody).
Heck even the dating world is in your favor, access to sex is in your favor. If you get pregnant you have many options, you don't even have to raise the child, you could just leave it at a hospital or fire station.
Federal funding for women's health concerns like breast cancer far outnumber federal funding for something like prostate cancer which incidentally KILLS MORE MEN A YEAR THAN BREAST CANCER KILLS WOMEN. Don't believe me, i have an earlier post direct from the American Cancer Society.
Way more options as far as public help.
More scholarships are available to women than to men.
More lenient prison sentences for felonies, heck if you even go to jail.
So many options you have to completely opt out of any responsibility and accountability yet you complain that you have it bad?
How and where can this be?
The only way I could see being a woman as hell is the fact that you have to deal with other women, well we do that too.
It seems the "hell" of being a woman is greatly exagerrated.
Ladies, life as a man is not the paradise of freedom, leisure and privilege you seem to think it is. The feminists lied to you. Working, which is essentially every man's destiny, is something I personally find grossly overrated and quite loathsome the preponderance of the time. Do I have a realistic opportunity to have a woman support me? No.
Even with the numerous disadvantages men face in these braindead Western societies, life as a man is not "hell" just because one was born male. The same concept applies even more to women.
posted by Lord Feverstone | 5:58 PM
30 Comments:
Well perhaps it's like giving someone a benefit who you know is going to need it later. As when they handicap a horse race accordingly to make the weight each horse carries equal...
Women do have disadvantages to men which become obvious as the two age. You don't see this when they are 5 or even 15 years old. Actually it probably starts becoming obvious when they are 25 and then by 35 it's right in your face...
For instance, women reproductive life span is shorter then men. We do not have the decade or more the way men do after graduating college to experiment, travel, grow, etc., before settling down and having children. We 'age' faster so must make our life choices earlier...as by the age of 27/28 our fertility has passed it's peak and then declines until we enter menopause.
Actually many of the women I work with entered academia at the age I was having children and have better careers then me now but no kids...so there's the tradeoff...
Many of the 'advantages' you speak of that women get are short term ones that even out as the sexes age...and then eventually men pull ahead...it's like the beauty of a butterfly that has a lifespan of what: about a week????
I mean let's face it the media can keep featuring 30/40 year old woman as having all the options available that men do until the cows come home, it doesn't change the fact that few women at that age who aren't married with children will find partners...whereas men are still in the game at this point.
Actually most would say men are the ONLY ones from that age group in the game at that point, as few 35/40 year old men are looking to create families with 35/40 year old women...
So even the most successful women in our society such as Condi Rice, Cathy Young, Maureen Down, even that Harriet Miers (Bush's attorney) are living only half lives as men of that caliber and achievement level would NEVER be alone with no families. They would be rewarded with their success by having their choice of the 'best' partners.
You are focusing again on a very narrow point in time in most people's lives to say women have it better then men...over the long haul it evens out and then men pull ahead and remain ahead in everything that counts. AND don't give me this crap about shorter lifespans. As men die sooner not due to wars so much anymore as few men in our society go to war anymore but due to their own choices to pursue dangerous occupations and recreational pursuits: ie., becoming police officers or race car drivers and/or hunting, ski diving, etc., as hobbies...
You CHOSE those life style choices, they are not forced upon you. You want to live long...quit driving fast and hunting as recreation, for instance, stay home and watch tv or knit or read as your recreation...same as women do...you'll live long then...
Regarding Chicagoman's ridiculous assertion that women get HUGE divorce settlements MOST people do not get huge divorce settlement as MOST people have nothing except their salary, a house and maybe an IRA for retirement. Americans especially live is a nation where we have the lowest savings rate of all the industrialized nations as our savings go into our houses.
ONLY 15% of all people who divorce get ANY alimony and of that group (which includes men who frequently contribute NOTHING of significance to the marriage, as in the case of Hallie Berry's husband getting alimony when they had a short term marriage, NO KIDS and he cheated on her 29 times before she finally divorced him) anyway only half of that 15% manage to collect the alimony...
Taking the examples of a few celebrity divorce settlements and trying to use them to make any meaningfull statement about the lives of most people is nothing but an attempt to distort reality for most of us...
AND, of course, anyone with common sense would understand why a fit mother should ALWAYS get custody of children. As women contribute, invest, risk and simply do more in order to have kids. Men contribute little in this area...so if these custody wars men have incited continue, women will have fewer children anyway and they'll be nothing to fight about...
Male selfishness will wind up destroying us both...
The arguments Chicago Man puts forward are ones that I, and many other mra's, have presented either on their blogs/sites or in forums
And the more they are reiterated- the better
Joe Public need to know exactly what they are up against in regards to feminist bile and the way it disadvatages men
NYMOM's statements just don't hold water- and if I had more time I would slice and dice them to show you why
Lord Feverstone- I haven't been over to any men's forums this past week because I've been away on business, and have only a spare second now !
So I just want to say Welcome to the Antimisandry forum- and I look forward to our discussions when I return there
Fred
Well the last time population numbers in the west declined, Rome fell and western civilization went into the dark ages for almost 1000 years...we didn't begin climbing out of it until about the late 1400/1500s...
AND it was probably for the same reasons. As Roman emperors starting passing laws to favor men who married and created families within those marriages. So feminism wasn't around then for you to blame Rome's decline on.
Clearly this is a repeat today of the same scenario. Which appears to be when men are given the option, they appear to favor constant casual sex with many women as opposed to marriage with one. AND this eventually translates into fewer marriages and children = collapse of that particular civilization...
Clearly this is why most societies make it difficult for men to obtain casual sex by punishing the women who allow you to obtain it.
There is a certain logic to it. Just as we punish drug pushers instead of the junkies who crave their products. Figuring the pusher is not hooked and thus likely to respond better to normal rational pressure to stop...
I guess that means we'll start seeing fewer women casually putting out for men which probably is why you're all trying to head overseas for women now. Don't think those societies will put up with you using their women for very long either.
That will end pretty quick as soon as they wise up to you.
Anyway, men bring these pressures on themselves as society tries to force you to do the right thing and you keep finding ways to not do it...for example: this whole custody war scenario erupted when the government tried to get men to at least support the children you carelessly spawned, even if you refused to marry their mothers...You responded by using the courts to get custody of these kids from their mothers, so you could raise them on the discount plan...thus causing enormous social disruptions in your selfish wakes.
Well, when the governing elites (other men btw, who will get fed up with your crap) finally crack down on you, you'll have no ones but yourselves to blame.
Well X just because you present an argument often enough doesn't mean it "holds water".
Are you claiming that if you say something enough times and maybe outshout your opponents that makes your argument correct?
Many men of the generation previous to yours embraced feminism because it benefitted them...so don't act like feminism was just a product of the thinking of women. Men of the 60s/70s benefitted as well. You all wished to be playboys like Hugh Hefner and get out of the 'straight-jacket' that civilization bound men in...for obvious reasons.
Men eagerly accepted the casual sex offered to you by women and the ability to wiggle out of an binding relationship (including denying any responsibility for an unmarried pregnancy) or deferring your decision to commit indefinitely until women finally just starting having children w/o you...
AND btw, doing just fine raising those kids in spite of the many statistical lies men have put out today about single mothers....
That's what really worried men I think. You suddenly realized you were very very expendiable.
That's the genesis of all this fatherhood ideology crap pretending to be concerned about children, when, in fact, men are concerned about themselves.
That is what this whole fatherhood business is about...you saw women moving on w/o you and realized you were becoming a bit player in family life...
Men made the decision to trade their previously presumptive title as head of family for Playboys. You all traded marriage with one woman for casual sex with many and now 40 years or so down the road, you don't like the results of YOUR choices.
Tough...
I hate to point this out to you but male lions don't sit in the shade all day...they are the protectors of the territory that the pride hunts in. They patrol it constantly and keep other males of their own kind out...as other male lions kill cubs that aren't theirs...
Just because male lions don't hunt doesn't mean they don't provide anything to the pride...
Like many men today you just look at the surface appearance of things w/o thinking about the reasoning underpinning it all...it's the same tendency that has you all thinking you are victims of some kind when, in fact, you are not.
For instance, the 'teasing' that women subject men to is not evidence of hatred of men as you all would like to project it...it's what women do to test how dangerous someone is...many young girls do this with men to gauge their reactions to frustrations/anger on a daily basis. It helps women decide if they wish to start a serious relationship with someone. It's not evidence of abuse or hatred.
Many of you have misread ordinary behavior and this lion business is a good example...
I'll agree that relationships are more problematic today due to the equalizing of power between men and women, now but that doesn't mean they are impossible. It just means they takes more work as anything important does.
"Infanticide just doesn't make sense these days--except for your Andrea Yates and Susan Smith types."
Two aberrations which prove absolutely nothing...even in the wild there is sometimes a mother who will abandon or eat her cubs. This doesn't mean that the basic 'mothers raising the young' program is flawed.
We cannot use aberrations to make any valid points for the 99% of the rest of us.
My goodness, doesn't nymom whine a lot. One thing I've noticed between men & women at a 'general' level is that when men complain, they generally complain about how things for everyone. They complain about how xyz impact everyone. The blame women, they blame men, they blame kids, they blame politics, they blame themselves they blame the weather.
Women, specifically feminist minded women blame men, over and over they just cannot help but blame men over and over they just cannot help but blame men over and over they just cannot help but blame men over and over they just cannot help but blame men over and over.
nymommy, doesn't it get boring?
BTW, Lord Feverstone, an excellent post.
"...it is well known that women perpetrate the vast majority of child abuse..."
YET most women do not abuse their children. Women in the role as mothers raise most of the children of the world in every society (60 million children under the age of 18 in the US alone).
So again those few hundred or so aberrations tell us nothing.
"What makes Yates and Smith any less representative of women then John Wayne Gacy is of men..."
I think it's pretty obvious to most thinking people that Yates, Smith and Gacey are not representative of either sex...
You'd have to be some kind of idiot if you thought Gacey represented most men.
He probably doesn't even represent most murderers. I believe he would be an aberration even in prison among his fellow inmates just as Smith and Yates probably are.
"...blame men over and over..."
Well as many of you have said on other blogs and I agree to a certain extent: men have built civilization, you are responsible for everything in it. All the technology, the buildings, the roads, the governmental and public structures, constitutions, social constructs, religions, etc.,
So if this is true, you must accept responsibility for the good as well as the bad that results from your handiwork.
You cannot accept the credit for medical discoveries that wiped out smallpox, for instance, and then turn around and act like reproductive technology as in birth control pills, IUD and yes even abortion is not the responsibility of the medical establishment that men, by and large, have created.
"Let's talk Gacey for a minute before anything else...
Why the need for VAWA?"
What the heck do Gacey and VAWA have to do with one another.
First of all VAWA is regarding domestic violence against women. Gacey committed all of his acts against young men...
So where are you going with this???
My point that you keep missing is that men in your movement keep bringing up extreme cases to try to make your case. AND I keep telling you we cannot look at those extreme situations as they tell us nothing about ordinary people...the original post here mentioned these 'huge' settlements women supposedly get in divorce and I'm teling you that statistically speaking most women get little or NOTHING in a divorce as most PEOPLE have little or nothing to settle. Especially in the US, most of our savings is sunk into our homes...
Realistically then we are talking about child support to the custodial parent who is frequently (as it should be) the mother...so let's discuss that, not all the other assertions which simply are not true.
"I speak for myself only..."
No you give advice to other men posing as an expert on these things. Telling them to never get married, not have children, just have casual sex with women, move to other countries, they will be happier away from here, etc.,
If you only speak for yourself then do so, but stop acting like an expert to advise young men on how to live...because as you yourself appear to be admitting you don't know anymore about these issues then the man in the moon.
"I have seen plenty like you. You don't like the idea that some poor bastard might escape your abuse by listening to me."
Listen I'm not in the market for someone, haven't been for years, so "that some poor bastard might escape' as you put it is a moot issue for me.
I'm just concerned that because you are bitter since your own marriage/relationship didn't work out that you are acting like your experience is the template for every other human being on the planet...
That's the issue here.
It's one thing if you are showing men that there are other things in life they can accomplish and leave a legacy for humanity, instead of the easy and obvious one: of having sex every chance they get until they manage to produce a kid or two...
It's quite another to keep promoting this degradation of women business, that a lot of your movement seems to be about...
Ahem, NYMOM: Would you, will you, make clear for the record once again that you are not a
feminist?
If memory decieves me not, I remember you to have discharged your mind somewhat to that effect on certain previous occasions.....
I don't consider myself a modern feminist of the gender neutral variety; however, I am for things being equal where they can be...I do happen to believe there are certain inherent abilities, traits, tendencies or whatever you want to label them as which are unchanging in men or women.
Although obviously humanity is the most highly evolved species on the planet, nevertheless, we can look at every other creature that shares the earth with us and see pretty much the same sorts of sex diffentiated behavior with some rare, off the bell-shaped curve exceptions.
So I see no reason to try to deny that these basic differences exist. It seems foolish to do so, like trying to deny humanity's essential linkage to every other living being on the planet...like we're Gods or something which we are definitely not...just another species of living beings on earth.
Male revitalization:
So this is a separate movement from the MRA one????
Well what does it consist of????
NYMOM...you fit the profile of a feminist to a 'T', in all but the matter of 'gender neutralism' (anti-essentialism) -- which you apparently take to be the main criterion of what constitutes feminism.
But there are plenty of feminists around who are willing to chuck gender neutralism if it gets discredited, or if it no longer serves their purpose politically.
Gender neutralism is 'old school'.
"Gender neutralism" is old school.
No it's not, just the opposite.
Gender neutrality is the basis for most of what passes for feminist discrimination theory today...
For instance: they look at how many women are stay-at-home moms versus how many are CEOs or Presidents of Fortune 500 companies. Then based upon gender neutral analysis, feminists decide that more women are stay-at-home mothers then CEOs due to discrimination.
Otherwise these numbers would be exactly 50/50...
Same thing with firemen, police, army enlistment, corrections, construction industry, engineering and physics majors, etc., Everywhere a discrepancy exists according to gender neutralized feminism, it's due to discrimination and must be rectified accordingly...
Feminists then begin agitating for programs, public policy changes, tax law subsidies, etc., to change people's behavior...the more resistent people are the more draconian the measures become to force complaince.
Additionally, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you MRAs are much more akin to modern feminists then an old school feminist is...as many of the things you say and wish to happen are taken directly from the playbook of modern gender neutralized feminism...
Even as we speak, one of your fathers rights groups has submitted a brief to a Mass. court supportive of a lesbian, who lived with a mother and her child for 18 months, to get custody of the child...
That's a classic gender neutralized position: that just anybody can fill in for a child's mother. No recognition whatsoever of the mother/child bond...
Sorry to have to be the one to point this out to you people...
Yes NYMOM, gender-neutralism IS old-school, having been one of the first tenets of the current wave of feminism when it kicked off starting in the radical 1960s.
And it is still alive and kicking today. No question about it. But that doesn't stop feminists from adopting other ideas which flat contradict it, if they find some political advantage in doing so. They're like the Pope in that respect, always changing their position....
I have no dog in the biodeterminism/nurturism fight, although from what I can tell biodeterminism has more scientific credibility. Whatever the TRUTH is, I'll flow with it. BUT....I expect that other side to do likewise, with consistency, even if this leads to political ramifications they don't care for.
Ah...but they are notorious for 'switching the channel' when that happens!
"1) Rugged individualism -- (one of the stupidest notions to ever gain acceptance.)"
Mmmm......no. Not always stupid.
Take my own case. The "ruggedness" of my "individualism" varies according the setting where I happen to find myself.
Or in other words, sometimes ya just can't help being "rugged"....;)
Or...individuated.
OK, so maybe the notion purely in an abstract sense is stupid. I'll grant you that much.
Well Rich probably your movement won't attract many people then as it's too far out of the mainstream...
Most people support good government. They want order in their lives.
Most people support border controls in every country. Nobody supports willy nilly immigration from all over the place. Even Mexico has strict border controls for the rest of Central/South American on their own southern borden. It's only on their northern one with the US that they are against it...
Populations have become too big and life too complex to allow unfettered movement of large groups of people any longer...like what Europe did with N. America,
Australia and New Zealand, for instance. The conditions that allowed that to happen and led to it creating successful societies simply no longer exist.
"Yes, NYMOM, gender neutralism is old school."
No it isn't.
First of all when I say old-school I'm referring to women who fought for women to have the right to vote and be educated for jobs. That sort of thing...
Those early women (prior to 1920 when we got the vote) never mentioned gender neutralism...Actually many of their groups disbanned after women were given the vote.
Probably they would have thought 1960s feminists were nuts if they were still alive to listen to some of the things they say and do today...
BTW, where did you get the idea that the Pope is inconsistent?
Actually the Catholic church as a whole has remained consistent in all its stances, much more so then other religions...
If you are talking about what the Pope said about Islam recently, you totallly misunderstood what he said.
He was just quoting a passage from someone else, but it was very relevant to what's going on today. He didn't apologize for saying it, he just said he was sorry if someone got offended by it...
It's just like when the Catholic Church has said repeated about gays, 'hate the sin, not the sinner'...nothing inconsistent about either message.
Being diplomatic when you are in the spotlight is permissible. It changes nothing about the Catholic Church's stance on other issues however and is not inconsistent in anyway.
But this highlights another little-mentioned facet I've noticed of the MRA movement. It appears to be very anti-western basically.
As far as I'm concerned you can easily be linked with communism, islamism and all the other 'isms' whose primary goal is the destruction of western civilization as we know it...even feminism...
Your movement can fit right in with them...
The solution to poverty in other nations is not to move every poor person here as then our nation will collapse under the strain of providing all those social services.
But your answer are just as I thought they would be...no basic concern or respect for the lives or safety of other people, just total chaos is your goal...which is why anyone talking with you for a little while will always reject your philsophy, as you really don't even have one...like I said just total chaos...
..over the long haul it evens out and then men pull ahead and remain ahead in everything that counts.
nymom
With alimony and child support given to women so freely, it has upset the natural balance to the point where women are willing to strip their children of their fathers over trivial matters, knowing that these women have after marriage parachutes crammed down the throats of men, for women.
I'm sorry you have been so hurt. It's been eye opening for me in the recent days to have been reading blogs written by men about feminism. I've really only heard women's opinions on this in the past. I was aware of how it affected myself, and other women, but selfishly didn't fully consider the pain it has caused to men as well.
When I finally learned and believed that men need and deserve respect, and that it was natural and good for me to actually be a woman as I was created, my entire family was renewed. Natural order was restored, not because my man changed, truthfully it was I who changed. Life has never been fuller for either one of us.
To say men need to change to me implies that they are responisble for the present. I don't buy it. Nobody is off the hook.
Unfortunately L.F., it looks like you've ended with the Gonz reject. Piss the bitch off. All it does is take up bandwidth and just sprouts the usual hypocritical feminist dogma like it's memorised it verbatim.
It's for likes of feminist bitches like nymom that I edit all my messages as I am certainly not going to give that moron the time of day.
Good luck, good blog..
I'm late to the discussion, but I'm fed up with hearing about the "selfishness" of men causing the downfall of western civilization.
Supposedly if women stop having kids to keep from losing them, they're responding to the selfishness of men.
But if men stop having kids to keep from losing them, then we're just being selfish.
Yeah right.
Here's some news for NY. We men aren't any keener on losing our kids than you women are. If some guys choose not to run that risk by starting a family, they can hardly be blamed.
The miracle is that the overwhelming majority of men still do it anyway.
Yes, even young guys in their twenties. Everyone who lives in a college town knows about the deluge of weddings that occur during the week after graduation.
Young guys, without the age and experience to even choose wisely, voluntarily taking on women who have a fifty percent likelihood of walking out on the commitment and taking their children away.
Would you go for those odds, NY? I didn't think so. So who's the selfish gender, again?
Maybe when women grow up and start honoring their family commitments, marriage as an institution will undergo a revival.
Or maybe women's selfishness will end up destroying us both...
Nymom, I am in agreement with your thoughts.
I see the unisex coming. And both sides wanting it.
>>For instance, women reproductive life span is shorter then men
Men's life span is shorter than women.
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