pull down to refresh
0 sats \ 9 replies \ @k00b 15 Aug \ parent \ on: Vote With Your Feet, A Short Story BooksAndArticles
I don't think you're reading me generously. I'm not saying "women are taking on no responsibility anymore." I'm saying men aren't allowed to have traditional expectations of women without being labelled as controlling abusers while women are allowed to have the same "protect and provide" expectations of men.
I'm not saying women shouldn't be free of traditional expectations if they want to be free of them. I'm saying that if women want to be free of traditional expectations, men aren't going to sign up to let women hold them to traditional expectations. Men are going to choose to be single (which they are choosing en masse ... which I hypothesize is due to this expectation mismatch for lack of a better hypothesis).
I wasn't responding to anything you said there, nor was I implying that it was in reference to anything you said. Accusations like this are enough of a sign that this has turned unproductive.
Thanks again for the productive parts of the convo.
I want men to provide me the safe space to pursue my goals and dreams, not the safe space to be their unpaid household servant, you know? I guess I just don't see men as truly protecting/providing when all their protection and providing does is give them the right to tell me what to do. It's not a tradeoff I'm personally willing to pay. Which I suppose is why women aren't signing up to be held to traditional expectations and also choosing to be single en masse.
It certainly IS an expectation mismatch.... kind of feels like a game of chicken too. Who blinks first?
lol, if women were withholding sex with abstinence before marriage, it would definitely be the men. The women would win this. Irony I guess.
reply
Yep, it's an old fashioned standoff. Something has to give.
What would work, generically, on the male side afaict: have equally unrestricted expectations of men, i.e. if they don't want to protect and provide, allow them to negotiate through some other means equal status/worthiness to men that do want to protect and provide.
The fundamental thing is I imagine that people, man or woman, want a fair trade. I also think that men value partners that give overlapping value, and partnership for partnership's sake, less. I'm unsure if that's true for women, but it might be. It's like a factory line where workers are only trained on one section.
lol, if women were withholding sex with abstinence before marriage
This would work if it were only possible for men to get sex through marriage (though it might exacerbate the problem like a minimum wage). Divorce rates would probably increase a lot too I imagine, because I don't think it changes the expectation mismatch and courtship could be more common but less honest.
Absent an end to the standoff, I think the market replaces families. Men and women protect and provide for themselves and pay people to be surrogates in a partner's stead: household servants, relatively infrequent emotional/physical companions, baby makers, and nannies. It's not desirable obviously, but that's where it looks like it's going.
reply
What maddens me about this dilemma is how relatively inflexible men are. Caveman Grok is a man for a reason. Grok says, "Grok protect and provide, Grok do no nothing else." Even if men were still generically desirable while not protecting and providing, I'm not sure enough men would be able to switch biological purposes very well. We can be derelict in duty easily but changing duty requires a relatively unique and powerful man.
reply
I always think of a government saying "we're here to protect you".
Protection is creating a land where citizens are free to pursue their dreams and happiness, of their own volition, that THEY choose themselves.
The second the government says "we're here to protect you, you'll have to serve us the way we tell you to though"... you've gone into tyranny, not protection. And tyranny is dangerous af.
Women do not want tyranny and the danger that comes with that, masquerading as 'protection'. I think that's what it comes down to. We see the falsity of these claims.
Protection is fine. But is it really protection? If I cannot pursue my dreams, happiness, and choices?
Thing is.... a LOT of people do still get married. Happily. Even couples that are more modern. It's a very real thing. I also suspect there will be many upcoming trad divorces. Give it 3-10 more years. I think if I'm right... it's a tragedy.
reply
A lot of people do still get married. That's for sure.
Our World in Data has some cool stats on how that's going.
reply
Out of curiosity, is their definition of marriage purely with a government issued marriage certificate?
I wonder if perhaps people are trending toward a more organic marriage, but the term marriage was co-opted by governments, and so there is not currently a term for a man and woman living together, being exclusive, and raising a family and pooling resources.
reply
hmm
"In recent decades there has been a decline in global marriage rates, and at the same time, there has been an increase in cohabitation. What’s the combined effect if we consider marriage and cohabitation together?
The chart below plots estimates and projections, from the UN Population Division, for the percentage of women of reproductive age (15 to 49 years) who are either married or living with an unmarried partner.
Overall, the trend shows a global decline – but only a relatively small one, from 69% in 1970 to 64% projected for 2020. At any given point in the last five decades, around two-thirds of all women were married or cohabitated."
reply
Odd paragraph, I'm intrigued by this one I didn't expect;
"For older people the trend is reversed – the share of older women who never got married is declining. In the 1971 census, the share of women 60-64 who had ever been married was lower than it is for women in that age bracket in the decades since."
reply