I definitely feel like one major shift that has to occur is it needs to become culturally common for men post-college-age to have large male (or coed) friend groups. I bet that a lot of those mental and physical health benefits that were found in the study of women with strong female friend groups could be replicated in research on strong friend groups in general. Our culture's long history of men relying on their wife for all their emotional needs after marriage is not sustainable and not healthy for anyone involved. If men would also usually form strong social groups, I think it would be a lot harder for them to be taken in by misogynist narratives on how much women are failing them, etc.
It also exists because both genders are cautioned at every step not to have platonic friends of the opposite sex. That shit should end. If a guy is friends with a woman for most of his life, it's much harder to dehumanize women.
BB generaton here- I think same sex friend groups - can practice patriarchial standards too - I notice that there mostly seems to be a vying for a top dog position - and others conform to get to belong - I never really wanted to compete - so then I became the rebel in the group - which seems more honest to me - yet more ostracizing. Non-violent communication could be a way forward with a goal of egalitarianism,
I agree. I'm a single men and through dismantling those heteronormative standards towards men and finding similar people, I have a large support network of both men and women who I can share my emotions with and rely on.
When I read the article about women having their emotional needs met through their female friends I could relate. I get them met friends regardless of their gender.
What it takes is a willingness to be vulnerable and disrupt the social norm of masculinity. Then emotional intimacy in relationships is possible.
So first, I am a heterosexual man. Just to get that out of the way.
I also think its quite a bit offensive to say to someone else that how they behave is only ok if they are gay. Sounds like a very narrow world view.
I was just about to write a long explanation of why the mindset you hold is, in my view, ultimately not doing much good for either women or men and leads to a lot of the problems mentioned in the article.
But before I get into that, are you willing to have a civilized discussion about it and your mind changed when presented with new evidence and actually learn or just want to push your mindset onto me?
I am willing to do that, but only if the other side has the same willingness.
The comments are deleted, but it’s obvious they were something along the lines of “That’s gay, bro!” And THERE you have the thing that keeps men lonely; loneliness is somehow considered more “masculine” in our culture than admitting you need someone.
Part of the problem with male friendships is the competitive macho bullshit that always seems to appear when groups of men get together. It serves to build walls to emotional intimacy and reinforces stereotypical patterns of behavior. It’s as difficult to find a compatible genuine male friend relationship as it is to find a compatible female mate relationship.
The type of philosophy and rhetoric espoused in this post is and has been doing irreparable damage to the very problem it proposes to solve.
Rousseau was definitely a misogynist, and besides abandoning his five children, much of his philosophy is very problematic in my opinion. The idea that "all men are created equal" (men here being an antiquated word for humankind) did not actually come from Rousseau at all, but rather from the Judeo-Christian idea that humans are created in the image of God, and as such have inherent value. It would be odd if that idea had only been in existence since the 18th century.
When I looked up the scientific evidence on the average lifespan of married versus single women, it seems like the evidence clearly points in the opposite direction -- marriage increases the average lifespan of both men and women.
I don't think a lot of women would agree with you. For example, I think Jane Austen, whose books center around the topic of your post, would strongly disagree with many of the things you wrote. That is my opinion after reading her actual books, but anyone is welcome to disagree with it.
Finally, I would like to note that Mark Twain's quote
"What would men be without women? Scarce certain mighty scarce."
can and ought to be applied both to men and to women, unless of course you would rather have no voice on this issue in the future.
This is such a good point. It is not healthy for one partner to become someone’s whole emotional world. Men having real friendships and support outside their romantic relationships would take so much pressure off women, and it would probably make relationships healthier too.
Older men’s stories are full of the same line — it’s really hard to make friends past high school or college. Despite what sitcoms tell us, most companies don’t encourage employees to sit around and talk. And after eight hours of work, who the hell past their twenties wants to “hang out?” We’re exhausted, all we want to do is crawl home and drink or squirrel around online or just have a good solid cry where no one can judge us.
Women needed men more back then, because of men! They created those systems and conditions. It's actually always been true that men need us more, the systems have just distorted that
That becomes very clear if you read that Misogyny book, because it's mostly about hunter gatherers, and it's incredibly apparent that even if a subsistence level society with almost no possessions, men have ALWAYS been making up literally insane systems to try to get control of women. When that book goes through examples, it's actually pure insanity what some of them were doing. A lot of them do things like invent an entire terrifying fake monster or deity/spirit creature of some type whose sole purpose is to ensure that the women and children are perpetually terrified, and do rituals where the men put on costumes and pretend to be the monsters purely to keep the women and kids terrified (who are NOT in on the secret and letting them in on the secret it literally punishable by death). They virtually all have secrets and keep things from women in a direct bid to control them, it's really disturbing to read.
Because women give birth to men, it is too much power. They had to make sure women knew that she was derived from Adam's rib. Always trying to take the power away from women.
A woman knows her children are hers. A lot of unnecessary male insecurity (often excused as “evolutionary necessity”) has resulted from that biological fact.
Actually in hunter gatherer societies women bring in most of the calories, and often do the processing of the meat brought in, plus get the water so I don't think it is true that women needed men more.
Both men and women were more dependent upon their community, this tied into relative poverty and lack of information. Women definitely wanted men a lot more when men were inherently more economically productive because men were physically stronger and that enabled them to complete a lot more labor.
Also when women didn’t have reliable birth control, and where you needed to deliver significantly more babies to term to have a viable offspring.
This is why we see factory girls getting paid more than their brothers, not despite of social systems but because of them.
Uh no they hired young single women for many early factory jobs because they could pay them less and also house a large number of them together nearby. You can't do that with men as much because you end up with "man camp" style nonsense. They do the same thing in China, so in addition to the skewed gender ratio it's even more extreme because more women are able to get jobs in the city.
A young factory girl who went into the city to work was doing better than her brother. There isn’t any good way around that. This is also a moving of the goal posts.
There were some men employed at different jobs in factories who made more, but there was a differentiation in kind of labor. We see this in modern setups as well, men don’t really get paid more for the same work, you just wouldn’t hire them.
Considering we have, on-record, people industrially concentrating men for purposes of industry, not sure how far “man camp” accusations can go.
Actually the first sentence is probably true, patriarchy likely came about after agriculture, about 10ky ago. What kind of system was in place before, I don’t think we can really tell for sure. It seems to have been something between mildly polygynous and/or just promiscuous.
Claims about pre-history, especially when based on modern hunter-gatherers are incredibly low confidence at best and often obvious political insertions at worst.
Patriarchy (which is a horribly abused term), probably has more to do with men's role scaling better especially in terms of visibility and written history, than anything else. There are pretty fundamental labor efficiencies from having women do child care (especially when breast feeding is mandatory), which societies need to exploit until they industrialize. As you exist in a society where your family makes up a smaller and smaller portion, there are more and more people to interact with in the external sphere and more wealth to possibly accumulate.
Yeah I don't disagree with any of this. Indeed modern hunter-gatherers are bound to be very different than pre-agriculture ones, to the point where you can reasonably doubt they are really pure HGs. And yes the division of roles is more efficient and has most likely been there all along (and can be observed in other primates too, of course). But the same can't be said about the nuclear family structure, which is more likely to be a modern invention, probably rising along the concept of property and the necessity to establish hierarchies in more complex societies.
The nuclear family is intentionally inefficient, in that being able to be independent of your extended family, owning your own property and home, having your wife not work, .etc were all status symbols for a very long time specifically because they were difficult to achieve. As our cost of living has risen, the appeal of trad wives seems to have also grown.
The historical default of post-agricultural societies is that people were still incredibly inter-dependent (the idea that men and men alone were independent is largely a myth), and that extended family ties were incredibly important and the family itself was often quite powerful (and was neither male nor female).
Not necessarily true either, the human norm isn’t really patriarchy or matriarchy but absolute gerontocracy. Tribal elders within tribes held all the power over young, you see it today too with how much government positions are dominated by old people.
Humans are a naturally gerontocratic species, simply because our organisations are dependent on social prowess over physical prowess like in other animals. Older people are naturally more socially advantaged as they know more people, have more social networks and over time accumulate things like bribes and social blackmail. Young people will always be at a social disadvantage.
bell hooks had similar notions on how love that comes from want, not need, feels. I really appreciate you naming the shift in your marriage when you became financially sovereign - this is so central to our sense of safety, and it changes the energetic foundation of the relationship. It makes me wonder if the parallel for men is emotional sovereignty...if they’re in touch with and able to hold their own inner world, they can then choose to be in relationship from a grounded, self-sourced place.
I'm male, and I couldn't agree more. The relief I felt when my daughter told us she was gay (not the big secret, really) was overwhelming. I knew she wasn't going to have to spend any of her life propping up a needy halfwit. She's married to a nice woman and they have a great life together. I have said for years that the most competent people I've worked with are all women, and I'm a 70 year old business analyst. I am very much in favour of matriarchy, or, at the very least, equality of representation of the sexes in business, politics etc at all levels. I'm pretty sure the number of idiotic decisions would fall. By 100% in some areas. No I don't think women are godlike beings of infinite patience. I do think they tend to consider what might go wrong, a basic stumbling block for most men. Do I need to point out examples? If Pam Bondi was making the decision about Iran I think that somewhere in the process she'd think "might this come back to bite me in the ass?" That's all we need for a vast improvement in everything. Great article!
For the first time in my life I heard a parent wanting his/her daughter to be gay, because otherwise she might marry a "halfwit" man. WOW... that's insane.
I’ve heard this for years from pretty much every man I know with daughters. No father I know wants his daughter to have to deal with men, and in fact, they dread it.
Not only do I have to worry my daughter might marry a needy halfwit, I also have to worry that my son might marry a needy halfwit, although I think that is less likely.
Certain groups of men are fighting hard to force women back into a dependent position. Outlawing abortion was a powerful step in that direction. Now they want to outlaw birth control and no fault divorce. This is a large contingent of men (and women) who are actively trying to force women back into a manufactured state of dependency.
I think it’s important to recognize that this is not an accident. Female dependency was manufactured on purpose and unless it is strenuously and effectively opposed, we will be forced back into submission. They want this. They are angry that women have options.
Many men, quite correctly, fear that if women have a choice they will be left unchosen. Instead of attempting to be more appealing, they opt to literally mobilize a complex political opposition to women’s right to choose. They don’t exactly read as open to the joys of mutuality.
Right?! It seems so simple to those of us who do it. Make an honest and mutual connection. Support your person in every human way you can, receive support from them. Be strong together so you can go forth and make a beautiful and joyful world.
they'd rather exert pressure\domination politically- vs. introspection to see how they might improve their own life, - then they could bring something to the party vs. just taking it-
To be fair I don’t think the birth control is as much both controlling women as it is society is tired of fatherless children. There’s not a simple way to prevent men from having sex but it’s easier to take birth control away to prevent women from having sex.
This also incentivizes women’s to be more selective of partners which I’d argue is actually more beneficial to women.
Society only needs to worry about fatherless children (a biological impossibility) in the context of patriarchal religion and male monopoly of resources.
What’s your point? That’s still how society runs and we need fathers in the home. Most people don’t want to completely change all social structures and turn the whole upside down it causes chaos. However most people want a better society in general and one way to have that is less fatherless children it’s really simple it’s not about controlling women. Women still can choose who they have sex with and condoms still exist. You can also choose not to have sex around ovulation or do oral only etc. You’re not being controlled by losing access to birth control however birth control quite literally does control you
I see you are young. Birth control does not control women. It gives women control
over our fertility. Men, however, have been hell-bent on controlling women for all of recorded history. Forced pregnancy is a very good way to control women. Condoms are a method of birth control that rests entirely with the male. If you were at risk for pregnancy in a country that didn’t allow you to end an undesired pregnancy, in a society with a long history of male-supremacy and frequent rape would you seriously want to put even more reproductive choice into the hands of those who cannot become pregnant?
Women do not always get to choose with whom we have sex or when we have sex. Sexual coercion is not rare. Birth control reduces the impact of sexual coercion, gives women positive control over our own fertility and helps with a variety of gynecological health needs.
I’m 30 lol and I’ve been on birth control an I’ve understood it. It definitely controls you. Naturally you menstruate and it stops that how’s that not control 😂 it changes your mood sometimes causes depression etc. your lying to yourself to pretend it’s freedom.
30 seems pretty young to me! And I don’t think birth control = freedom. Birth control gives women control of our fertility. Honestly, the entire mammalian reproduction system is pretty poorly evolved imo.
In terms of birth control controlling us, I see your point concerning mood swings and menstruation changes. However, mood swings occurred with or without birth control and we menstruate more now than we ever have for all of recorded history. There is a trade-off certainly, but it is a trade we should be able to choose for ourselves.
Every day I watch the birds, many that mate for life, and I wonder why they chose each other and how they make it work - ok their lives are short but it's a poetic thought. In the relationships I have had, some very long ones - it was clear to me that I was no longer a friend as soon as I became a partner. I was slow to see it, because I was still being the friend, thinking like the friend, delivering like the friend - but I wasn't seen as a friend. Something shifts and you find yourself the opponent, the one to put all the anger on, the one to drench in the moods. Next life, I want to be a bird, just to see what that's like. Look how male birds attract their mates, all colourful and ready to serve her. Hmmmm ..... and he gets to be needed by her and knows how to meet those needs perfectly. He sings his heart out with pride in his role, his life. She is his best friend. No rules were made for them. Thank you for the thought provoking essay.
I’ve long been disturbed by the cultural idea that men and women can’t be friends because the man will always want to have sex with the woman. And with the idea that “friendzoning” is the worst insult for men. This implies that the only reason your partner is friends with you is because they are having sex with you. So depressing.
And yes! The birds have it figured out - the male bower birds being the ones to build, cleaning and decorate a space before the woman will mate - peacocks being the ones lugging around long, impractical colorful tails while the peahens are plain looking and unencumbered. A much more sensible approach for the responsibility of impressing to be upon the one who wants it more.
I don't think men want sex more than women do. I think men like to rack up conquests more than women do. When it comes to actual sex, a lot of men don't make much of an effort. They prefer to masturbate to online pornography.
Men have a need to be seen as sexually active more than women. They need the story - ‘this is my wife’ etc. it’s not really about the actual sex. It’s about image.
“And with the idea that “friendzoning” is the worst insult for men.”
It’s just because it threatens the role/identity that society tells you must play as a man. Like “you’re not man enough to get to have sex with her”. Again, I think it’s almost completely cultural.
I agree. It’s a status symbol. Wife, partner - when introducing her to someone they might as well be saying ‘this is the person I have sex with.’ I distinctly remember my ex becoming very annoyed with me right after introducing me to someone after we had broken up and he had to just use my first name instead of the claimed title. He also hasn’t even told many people likely because he would feel embarrassed by his single status. He says it’s his story to tell. We were together 30 years but the story is his to tell? Sad.
Yeah. That said though, I don’t think men are the only one responsible for propagating these kinds of role expectations. Not just in the obvious way that, as the article explains, women experience an increase in status when they are in a long term relationship, but also because they might (consciously or not) select mates that behave “manly” (for example the ones that are very self confident) as a display of “this is the man I am in a relationship with”. So in a sense being friendzoned is actually a negative (and self-fullfilling) vote on your own self confidence. What do you think?
I don't personally know any women who chose their husbands because they were manly (not sure if we see that term the same way). My friends who married and had kids didn't experience any lift in status. They didn't seek promotions because they were too busy running their lives, their kids lives and their husbands lives. In my experience woman don't judge other women at all based on whether they are in a relationship or not - I have never looked at a single woman and wondered if she was sexually active or not - I think that's a guy thing. Woman are not valued more for appearing sexually active - amongst women. They are valued for what they bring to the table - they bring value so they are valued. How is asking a guy to be your friend, a guy who you're not attracted to, a reflection of lack of confidence? If anything I think it's the opposite, but also wishful thinking because in my experience there will always be a line crossed or if a woman does enter a relationship with another man, her male friends will distance themselves from her, out of respect not to her - but to the guy. That's not friendship. It becomes obvious what the intent was all along. In my experience...
I've known women who judged other women based on whether they were in a relationship or not, but not whether they had "manly men" or not. Maybe there were a handful of weirdos but it isn't really a thing the way it is with men.
1.) If you're attractive at all (and I'm not saying by Hollywood/etc. beauty standards, just reasonably in shape, have a cute face, whatever), yes, most of the non-related men in your life have thought about having sex with you.
2.) Most of those men are also fine if you never have sex and there's no chance of sex.
Wow!! The way you phrased the shift from “friend” to “partner” is something I hope we can unpack further. 🥺 It’s heartbreaking and something that women are CONSTANTLY Gaslit about! Modern marriage is NOT what we’re sold by our husbands and families. I’ll never understand how parents can push their daughters into it (marriage), when they KNOW that she would be happier without it! I remember the EXACT moment I saw the shift from friend to wife. 🤨 I think a lot more young ladies (hell, women of all ages) would leave marriages early (before dependence can be assured😏) if they recognized this and realized that IF that shift occurs, he was never the friend he pretended to be and you’ll NEVER get that version of him back (as long as you’re married to him)
The spouse role absolutely bites for women. Perhaps some got lucky but most seem to have very similar stories. They marry someone they consider their closest friend only to learn that’s where the friendship ends. I think women should take a step back and feel confident that they are dodging a bullet. Maybe that’s the best we can do for men. Let them sort out the why behind their shift in behaviour after they’ve been with a woman for a while. It’s not that they feel trapped because as soon as you open the door to let them be free they are shocked and despondent. I spent way too long trying to understand. THEY need to understand. WE need to get on with our lives.
Exactly. Men supposedly fear commitment and evade being “tied down,” but the same man will be devastated and bitter if his wife divorces him and frees him from the terrible shackles of their marriage.
this is so sharp, Celeste. what stayed with me is the question underneath it all: what keeps women centering long-term partnership at all, given the actual cost? for me, the answer is training. this lives deep in women’s nervous systems and has been passed down across generations. if the statistics keep showing these kinds of costs and women still orient toward long-term partnership with men at a higher rate, that makes me pause. most women have never actually lived inside conditions where choice could fully exist without romantic love with a man being placed at the center.
So true Alexandra and I loved your piece last week about what actually goes on in a woman’s body when she breaks the patriarchal script even slightly - deregulation that keeps her coming back to maintaining the status quo.
i appreciate you saying that, Celeste. this runs so deep, there are so many layers to it. i’m really glad we’re all looking at it from different angles and working through it together. #smashthepatriarchy
Great read. Thank you. This topic wrenches at my soul and at 62 I wonder frequently if it’s time to just stop, give all my energy to the solo space I’ve created since my divorce 16 years ago, nurture female friendships more, and dive deeper into my little grandchildrens’ lives and which I love beyond words.
I’ve managed to survive as a single woman post divorce (career, home, retirement) when that was the greatest fear I had while married and most likely kept me in an unhealthy marriage far too long. I grew up immersed in patriarchal crap and it’s all I knew until my marriage died. I had no other script. So I rebuilt my life brick by brick.
I’ve also had an intimate relationship with a man for 15 years now yet we both live completely separate lives. Our families don’t even know. We get together every now and then for a weekend or a short vacay. Only because we both love sex and have found that to be the most fulfilling aspect of our relationship. Safe, monogamous sex. We are also foodies and until the past year enjoyed political discussions immensely. Our financial habits, health and wellness habits, home care, etc are not compatible at all. The older we get, the more pressure he puts on me to live together. So I can be a housemaid no doubt because that’s exactly what has happened when we have had a long weekend or week at my place — a beautiful home that I maintain 100% financially and physically.
I read that Misogyny book a few months ago and it's a real mind bender. The sheer amount of histrionic, hysterical fear of vaginas was quite wild to read. But also how in basically every primitive society including the supposedly more egalitarian ones, men just put such profound efforts into their attempts to exclude, deceive, and subordinate women, all in an effort to control them and to get to make decisions for them. The sheer terror they seem to feel at the idea of women making decisions for themselves, and extreme lengths they go to in order to control them, was quite astonishing.
The femosphere criticizes the manosphere and men in general, and yet wonders why the manosphere exists (though yes, some of these people, like Andrew Tate, are toxic idiots. The manosphere is a diverse space and quality varies greatly You've got idiots like Tate, fitness influencers, basically helpful people like Jordan Peterson, and people who feature stuff that's simply of interest to men like Joe Rogan).
So there really isn't a femosphere, in the same way. I'm not even sure there is a united feminist sphere. For that matter there is a STRONG difference between men writing about their problems and "the manopshere". There are differences within it but , if your idea of "diversity" is Jordon Peterson, I mean dude. Dude. You need to get out more.
He is a standard bearer. It's him. The mythos rich incels and the Tate wannabe lackwits, who take the lead. I guess the groypers and let's return to male headship are not insignificant but the old,Robert Bly, let's all go and beat our drums in the forest away from the womyn types can hardly be found. Let alone ordinary men who have ordinary issues.
And why?
Because the "manospshere" isn't about finding solutions. Not real ones. It tends to identify male problems and use these as a reason women shouldn't complain, rather than trying to fix them.Or you know actually communicate to individuals where there is a problem. At no point, does it accept as a solution, de-engineering expectations upon men by other men. They even blame feminists for why men are drafted and go to war and not women. Not where it belongs with their fellow men.
The very word toxic masculinity is toxic to them. Never mind it is a word that it is a shorthand for the very unfairness they complain about ie. expectations of masculinity or performances of masculinity that are harmful (toxic) to others or the man himself or more usually both. But the first people to want to keep those expectations are men in the manosphere. Now, you are criticizing men for being men.
It takes away all sympathy. Life is unfair to us. We are strong enough to suffer silently so everyone else should shut up too is not a winning slogan--even if true and it isn't. Trying to dominate everyone isn't going to win friends either. You want people to care? Stop embracing your demons.
This video is mostly about white women in America voting for DT, but also about the long history pattern, too. I think it might help explain your question.
Excellent video and my sister who is a couple years older than me who still is deeply entrenched in the self-righteousness of the religious right definitely unknowingly has fit right into this mold of the upper middle class white Christian preaching about patriarchy.
“men just put such profound efforts into their attempts to exclude, deceive, and subordinate women, all in an effort to control them”
Makes sense but my question is how much these efforts were actually successful way before the invention of agriculture. Can we really tell? If these efforts were successful shouldn’t this have left some genetic trace?
BRILLIANT research, insights, and analysis Celeste. Our mother died five years ago and our Dad at 92 now sits alone for hours reflecting about living nearly 70 years together. It was tumultuous, to say the least, and they pushed through the frequent emotional chaos (dragging their "kids" along) somehow but Mom was a vastly more emotionally mature, gracious, and encouraging person. Dad was routinely enraged, unpredictable, and inattentive (ADHD?). It wasn't until I was in my 20s, as the oldest sibling, that I realized his violent temper tantrums errupted when he couldn't articulate his intense inner frustrations. Guess how I did? I inherited the dysfunction virus.
My wife and I had a blowout with my parents during a visit in FL after Dad expressed admiration for the Donald and my wife asked him if he wanted his grandsons to be bullies. He replied, "yes". No mystery, then, that the 45 circus with all its garish clowns and monkeys became his and this nation's morality "play". Boo or cheer⁉️
It's awful tough stuff to process. I believe, though, that we must journey onward through our traumas, celebrate our joys, and acknowledge (as you have outlined so well) the shadowy darkness in order to discover how to redeem incongruity and create genuinely cooperative relationships snd communities.
What's your source on "married women are less sexually satisfied than single women", because that sounds extremely wrong. Married people have sex more often than single people, in every survey I've seen. Women find sex with long-term committed partners more satisfying than casual sex, in every survey I've seen
Just about all of the data she cites is cherry picked or contradicted by the lots of other studies.
I was really surprised by the “married women die earlier” stat so clicked though - it’s based on a single study from 2006 looking at data from 1981 - 2002. Author didn’t bother to google “marriage life expectancy effect” and find consensus meta studies clearly show neutral to positive effects on female LE (though male LE effects are higher.)
Irresponsible to put this out (and I don’t even really disagree with the core thesis.)
That stuck out to me, too. I have seen the exact opposite in surveys, and that claim has no links or citations. Similarly, the statement "Single women are the happiest and healthiest subgroup," is unsourced, and from what I've read married men and women are both significantly happier than their single counterparts. https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/08/27/marriage-happiness/
I like the way you emphasize the need for love. Heterosexual people are geared to want and need love and sex from the opposite sex. But for men, what really turns them on is the control and domination of women. I have become convinced that they prefer that to sex or love. I'm not sure whether they can change.
It's amazing to me that despite all the evidence that a relationship with a woman improves their lives, men put so little effort into it. Men's self-destructiveness is astonishing. I sometimes wonder if they are evolutionarily adaptive anymore and if nature will find a way to reduce their number, the same way we see in ant societies, in which most ants are females.
Yes. I think some have the chance to actually love, but are conditioned under the patriarchy to appeal to and impress other men as the most important thing, so dominating women gets them a status symbol (wife and kids) among other men.
It has to be said that this is an astonishingly stupid comment, and represents a fundamental lack of insight into basic psychological reality as well as an unfortunate absence of curiosity about human life as a phenomenon itself. I should probably not try to argue in good faith with someone that writes something called "Feminist Salon", but since you seem to be a good generic example of some frighteningly common views and I have 5 minutes, I might as well bite in this case and have a go since I happen to be here anyways.
First of all, we can address the obvious: To claim that the average man is more concerned with "control and domination of women" than sex or love is just scintillatingly stupid. It is the female equivalent of the equally idiotic idea that the average woman is more concerned with "money and resources" than sex or love. Now everyone is of course different and has his or her individual preferences, but most "dominating" behaviour that you perceive on the part of men is most likely rooted in simple good old existential insecurity. Contrary to what is depicted in popular culture (at least up until about 2016), the average man on the younger side of things is terribly insecure in regards to his attractiveness to women. Any form of relationship in the younger years often tends to coincide with the years in which the average woman has peak potential sexual agency and receives the most attention that she will ever receive. It really is not that deep: a man is scared of losing someone that he cares about (and yes, which he knows that he can get sex and/or love from), and does not want to lose her. In some cases this gives rise to reprehensible, "controlling" behaviour. In other cases it gives rise to poetry. It should be noted that the exact same insecurity gives rise to a lot of bat-shit crazy female behaviour.
Secondly there is in general very poor understanding of the psychological differences between the sexes from both men and women, of which your original comment is a perfect exhibition. It is true that most women are able to obtain the feeling of "being seen" through their friendships, while male friendships function on completely different principles. It is largely only through relationships with women that most men are able to obtain the same feeling. On the flipside, most male friendships are pretty innocent and genuine when they arise, and can take on a real unique depth. Most female friendships are not really based on anything very deep, and can quickly become incredibly dysfunctional (and "toxic", as the young'uns say today). But again, everyone is ultimately unique. Your belief that men putting so little effort into relationships is "self-destructive" unfortunately applies just as well to the female side. I happen to be a man, and have seen first hand the benefit that a woman can gain from a relationship with a competent man. People are meant to complement each other psychologically, and a world that consisted only of female humans would be just as dysfunctional as a world that consisted only of male humans. It would also be a pretty boring world to live in.
Thirdly, it always has to be acknowledged that many of these beliefs arise in circumstances of unprecedented modern luxury. If the electricity went out and did not come back on, it is unlikely that any of this rhetoric would last for more than 3 minutes. It also becomes a different game as soon as pregnancy and children become involved, which is often strikingly absent from any of the general discussions of these issues.
Ultimately I pity anyone that views life and relationships in this way; it is a very low-quality existence in comparison to what is possible. Perhaps it is just my artist brain on the loose, but I am proud to say that I will never personally experience life through this filter.
"On the flipside, most male friendships are pretty innocent and genuine when they arise, and can take on a real unique depth. Most female friendships are not really based on anything very deep, and can quickly become incredibly dysfunctional"
Yeah, that told me everything I needed to know about you. Did you even read the article at all? Or just skimmed it so you could argue your bullshit, 5th grade thoughts about male vs. female friendships?
Obviously I read the article, and while something that I write here clearly has you upset, you do not attempt to articulate what it is wrong about my claims but come rather with a quite weak attempt at a personal insult. You should be able to insult someone better than relating his or her level of intelligence to a 5th grader; come on.
Anyways. It is indisputable that there are fundamental differences between male and female friendships. Men tend to form friendships based around common interests and doing tasks. Competition tends to be based on competence, which you either have or you don't. Most men tend to "know their place". Women on the other hand tend to form friendships based around mutual support groups and the desire for consensus. Their competition is intensely interpersonal and social, and as a result you get this situation quite often where women will pretend to be friends, use each other for emotional support, and then viciously attack them socially when the opportunity arises (I remember that the film "Mean Girls" is quite a comical depiction of this dynamic, if you are old enough to have watched it as a teenager).
Again, everyone is different at the end of the day. There are though undeniable commonalities between the genders which we all know exist. For what it is worth, I grew up with 3 sisters. The gossip that I got to hear was insane. I do not think that I have on the other hand ever myself said anything about a male friend of mine that has not been to his face.
You base your entire knowledge of women on your dysfunctional family. That's pretty funny. Many women including myself do not gossip; that's a stereotype men have about us. A minority of women are highly competitive regarding attracting male attention but in my experience even those women often like to have female friends; they just keep their female friendships separate from their dating lives. Almost no woman I have ever known "pretended" to be friends with another woman. Some women don't value their female friendships but that's because society has taught them that they need a man to live and they therefore put all their energy into attracting and keeping a man. And I know many men who hate male competitiveness.
Very little of what you write here is of any significance to my previous claims.
Obviously most women like to have female friends (and many place a lot of value on these relationships), in the same way that most men like to have friends. That is just called being a human being with healthy desires. Friendships have nothing at all to do with dating necessarily; the point being made was that women get different things in general out of their female friendships than men do out of their male friendships (you admitted this yourself, and you are right).
Your claim that women do not pretend to be friends with other women is just laughable. If it was generally the case that women did not talk about each other behind each others’ backs, a considerable amount of the media produced in the past 30-50 years would not resonate with anyone. Half of Instagram right now consists of young women making videos about the difficulties they have in dealing with their «besties». Maybe you as an individual are somehow completely removed from it, but the stereotype exists for a reason. There are obviously a lot of fake, weak male friendships too, but my argument is that these are much less common because male friendships tend not to involve sexual competition to the same degree and tend to be based upon much different forces in comparison to women. Both men and women compete heavily for attention in different ways, and it can be hard on anyone at times.
I have no idea what world you live in, but in the world where I happen to exist women have been told en masse that «needing a man to live» is akin to a crime, that they should be single and independent at all costs (which ironically leads to many women being dependent on a male employer to whom they have no relation and the vagaries of a job market, but that is another issue), and that they should avoid having a family if at all possible. It is unfortunate, because I cannot see anyone living like this and having a satisfying life.
Not once in the entire comment did I ever even imply that any of this behaviour was "ok". If this is how you respond, then you demonstrate further that you are not very smart and simply not worth any more of my time. I tried!
This is really well reasoned and I love the Steinem quote.
It makes sense too, when you think of it. Think of your behaviour when you need something. Say you NEED food - you are starving. What would you do to get it? No judgement here - just think what you would do. And how it would make you feel. And how it would impact society.
Then say you WANT food. What do you do? How does it feel? How does it impact society?
None of us benefit from people being in NEED. But wanting things is delightful, especially when you figure out how to obtain them (that dream job, dream house, perfect meal… mmmm!) So men shouldn’t be trying to make women need them again. We want them plenty and that’s glorious. And we don’t want men to need us. It’s not in our best interest!But wouldn’t it be delightful for them to want us?
And this is why I agree with Steinem. Only when we both want each other, completely free from the behaviour need brings out, can we really find love.
Just wanted to add the obvious: this is far from the only reason dating is hard, because MLM and WLW dating is hard too, y’all. But, you are also not wrong that this problem of gendered inequality and asymmetrical need is a big problem that is not being talked about enough. (And you know, not all queer people are immune to that, either, since we’re raised in heteronormative culture and all.)
"Every few months I get the urge to dig Jean-Jacques out of his grave to let him know that yet another of his declarations about gender has proved to be incorrect."
Such a great quote by Steinem!
I definitely feel like one major shift that has to occur is it needs to become culturally common for men post-college-age to have large male (or coed) friend groups. I bet that a lot of those mental and physical health benefits that were found in the study of women with strong female friend groups could be replicated in research on strong friend groups in general. Our culture's long history of men relying on their wife for all their emotional needs after marriage is not sustainable and not healthy for anyone involved. If men would also usually form strong social groups, I think it would be a lot harder for them to be taken in by misogynist narratives on how much women are failing them, etc.
It also exists because both genders are cautioned at every step not to have platonic friends of the opposite sex. That shit should end. If a guy is friends with a woman for most of his life, it's much harder to dehumanize women.
Much agreed, as someone who has a lot of male friends. And I don't get bent about their female friends.
BB generaton here- I think same sex friend groups - can practice patriarchial standards too - I notice that there mostly seems to be a vying for a top dog position - and others conform to get to belong - I never really wanted to compete - so then I became the rebel in the group - which seems more honest to me - yet more ostracizing. Non-violent communication could be a way forward with a goal of egalitarianism,
I agree. I'm a single men and through dismantling those heteronormative standards towards men and finding similar people, I have a large support network of both men and women who I can share my emotions with and rely on.
When I read the article about women having their emotional needs met through their female friends I could relate. I get them met friends regardless of their gender.
What it takes is a willingness to be vulnerable and disrupt the social norm of masculinity. Then emotional intimacy in relationships is possible.
What do you mean by that?
So first, I am a heterosexual man. Just to get that out of the way.
I also think its quite a bit offensive to say to someone else that how they behave is only ok if they are gay. Sounds like a very narrow world view.
I was just about to write a long explanation of why the mindset you hold is, in my view, ultimately not doing much good for either women or men and leads to a lot of the problems mentioned in the article.
But before I get into that, are you willing to have a civilized discussion about it and your mind changed when presented with new evidence and actually learn or just want to push your mindset onto me?
I am willing to do that, but only if the other side has the same willingness.
The comments are deleted, but it’s obvious they were something along the lines of “That’s gay, bro!” And THERE you have the thing that keeps men lonely; loneliness is somehow considered more “masculine” in our culture than admitting you need someone.
....no. None of that is true, or remotely feminist.
Part of the problem with male friendships is the competitive macho bullshit that always seems to appear when groups of men get together. It serves to build walls to emotional intimacy and reinforces stereotypical patterns of behavior. It’s as difficult to find a compatible genuine male friend relationship as it is to find a compatible female mate relationship.
The type of philosophy and rhetoric espoused in this post is and has been doing irreparable damage to the very problem it proposes to solve.
Rousseau was definitely a misogynist, and besides abandoning his five children, much of his philosophy is very problematic in my opinion. The idea that "all men are created equal" (men here being an antiquated word for humankind) did not actually come from Rousseau at all, but rather from the Judeo-Christian idea that humans are created in the image of God, and as such have inherent value. It would be odd if that idea had only been in existence since the 18th century.
When I looked up the scientific evidence on the average lifespan of married versus single women, it seems like the evidence clearly points in the opposite direction -- marriage increases the average lifespan of both men and women.
I don't think a lot of women would agree with you. For example, I think Jane Austen, whose books center around the topic of your post, would strongly disagree with many of the things you wrote. That is my opinion after reading her actual books, but anyone is welcome to disagree with it.
Finally, I would like to note that Mark Twain's quote
"What would men be without women? Scarce certain mighty scarce."
can and ought to be applied both to men and to women, unless of course you would rather have no voice on this issue in the future.
This is such a good point. It is not healthy for one partner to become someone’s whole emotional world. Men having real friendships and support outside their romantic relationships would take so much pressure off women, and it would probably make relationships healthier too.
Older men’s stories are full of the same line — it’s really hard to make friends past high school or college. Despite what sitcoms tell us, most companies don’t encourage employees to sit around and talk. And after eight hours of work, who the hell past their twenties wants to “hang out?” We’re exhausted, all we want to do is crawl home and drink or squirrel around online or just have a good solid cry where no one can judge us.
Totally agree.
Women needed men more back then, because of men! They created those systems and conditions. It's actually always been true that men need us more, the systems have just distorted that
That becomes very clear if you read that Misogyny book, because it's mostly about hunter gatherers, and it's incredibly apparent that even if a subsistence level society with almost no possessions, men have ALWAYS been making up literally insane systems to try to get control of women. When that book goes through examples, it's actually pure insanity what some of them were doing. A lot of them do things like invent an entire terrifying fake monster or deity/spirit creature of some type whose sole purpose is to ensure that the women and children are perpetually terrified, and do rituals where the men put on costumes and pretend to be the monsters purely to keep the women and kids terrified (who are NOT in on the secret and letting them in on the secret it literally punishable by death). They virtually all have secrets and keep things from women in a direct bid to control them, it's really disturbing to read.
Because women give birth to men, it is too much power. They had to make sure women knew that she was derived from Adam's rib. Always trying to take the power away from women.
A woman knows her children are hers. A lot of unnecessary male insecurity (often excused as “evolutionary necessity”) has resulted from that biological fact.
Basically. The key is to see past the fakes they make, and break down their walls of hate. Only then is a chance at equality possible.
That sounds like something written in a high school yearbook.
Those are certainly all words.
Actually in hunter gatherer societies women bring in most of the calories, and often do the processing of the meat brought in, plus get the water so I don't think it is true that women needed men more.
If you think for a moment about what you're saying, you'll realize how ridiculous you sound.
Men will become the most miserable creatures ever to exist once that happens
This is not even close to true.
Both men and women were more dependent upon their community, this tied into relative poverty and lack of information. Women definitely wanted men a lot more when men were inherently more economically productive because men were physically stronger and that enabled them to complete a lot more labor.
Also when women didn’t have reliable birth control, and where you needed to deliver significantly more babies to term to have a viable offspring.
This is why we see factory girls getting paid more than their brothers, not despite of social systems but because of them.
😳😳😳….🤦🏾♀️ For the record, ladies, THIS 👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾 is an incel rage-baiting for attention.
Ok, how obvious is he?! Thankfully most of us have been ignoring him.
lol no it isn’t. It’s true.
Uh no they hired young single women for many early factory jobs because they could pay them less and also house a large number of them together nearby. You can't do that with men as much because you end up with "man camp" style nonsense. They do the same thing in China, so in addition to the skewed gender ratio it's even more extreme because more women are able to get jobs in the city.
A young factory girl who went into the city to work was doing better than her brother. There isn’t any good way around that. This is also a moving of the goal posts.
There were some men employed at different jobs in factories who made more, but there was a differentiation in kind of labor. We see this in modern setups as well, men don’t really get paid more for the same work, you just wouldn’t hire them.
Considering we have, on-record, people industrially concentrating men for purposes of industry, not sure how far “man camp” accusations can go.
Actually the first sentence is probably true, patriarchy likely came about after agriculture, about 10ky ago. What kind of system was in place before, I don’t think we can really tell for sure. It seems to have been something between mildly polygynous and/or just promiscuous.
Claims about pre-history, especially when based on modern hunter-gatherers are incredibly low confidence at best and often obvious political insertions at worst.
Patriarchy (which is a horribly abused term), probably has more to do with men's role scaling better especially in terms of visibility and written history, than anything else. There are pretty fundamental labor efficiencies from having women do child care (especially when breast feeding is mandatory), which societies need to exploit until they industrialize. As you exist in a society where your family makes up a smaller and smaller portion, there are more and more people to interact with in the external sphere and more wealth to possibly accumulate.
Yeah I don't disagree with any of this. Indeed modern hunter-gatherers are bound to be very different than pre-agriculture ones, to the point where you can reasonably doubt they are really pure HGs. And yes the division of roles is more efficient and has most likely been there all along (and can be observed in other primates too, of course). But the same can't be said about the nuclear family structure, which is more likely to be a modern invention, probably rising along the concept of property and the necessity to establish hierarchies in more complex societies.
The nuclear family is intentionally inefficient, in that being able to be independent of your extended family, owning your own property and home, having your wife not work, .etc were all status symbols for a very long time specifically because they were difficult to achieve. As our cost of living has risen, the appeal of trad wives seems to have also grown.
The historical default of post-agricultural societies is that people were still incredibly inter-dependent (the idea that men and men alone were independent is largely a myth), and that extended family ties were incredibly important and the family itself was often quite powerful (and was neither male nor female).
which primates? We are equally related to bonobos and chimps.
Exactly. It’s only been 10,000 years. A patriarchy been around, matriarchy has been around for 200,000+ years. Everything was running fine then.
Not necessarily true either, the human norm isn’t really patriarchy or matriarchy but absolute gerontocracy. Tribal elders within tribes held all the power over young, you see it today too with how much government positions are dominated by old people.
Humans are a naturally gerontocratic species, simply because our organisations are dependent on social prowess over physical prowess like in other animals. Older people are naturally more socially advantaged as they know more people, have more social networks and over time accumulate things like bribes and social blackmail. Young people will always be at a social disadvantage.
This is what liberalism does to your brain.
bell hooks had similar notions on how love that comes from want, not need, feels. I really appreciate you naming the shift in your marriage when you became financially sovereign - this is so central to our sense of safety, and it changes the energetic foundation of the relationship. It makes me wonder if the parallel for men is emotional sovereignty...if they’re in touch with and able to hold their own inner world, they can then choose to be in relationship from a grounded, self-sourced place.
I was wondering that too
A worthy comment.
Men’s emotional sovereignty is exactly what hooks’s The Will to Change is about. I’m reading it right now and it’s so liberating
I'm male, and I couldn't agree more. The relief I felt when my daughter told us she was gay (not the big secret, really) was overwhelming. I knew she wasn't going to have to spend any of her life propping up a needy halfwit. She's married to a nice woman and they have a great life together. I have said for years that the most competent people I've worked with are all women, and I'm a 70 year old business analyst. I am very much in favour of matriarchy, or, at the very least, equality of representation of the sexes in business, politics etc at all levels. I'm pretty sure the number of idiotic decisions would fall. By 100% in some areas. No I don't think women are godlike beings of infinite patience. I do think they tend to consider what might go wrong, a basic stumbling block for most men. Do I need to point out examples? If Pam Bondi was making the decision about Iran I think that somewhere in the process she'd think "might this come back to bite me in the ass?" That's all we need for a vast improvement in everything. Great article!
Honestly, based. We need to shed these lies of patriarchy.
For the first time in my life I heard a parent wanting his/her daughter to be gay, because otherwise she might marry a "halfwit" man. WOW... that's insane.
“Insane” or just something that hurts your feelings?
I’ve heard this for years from pretty much every man I know with daughters. No father I know wants his daughter to have to deal with men, and in fact, they dread it.
Not only do I have to worry my daughter might marry a needy halfwit, I also have to worry that my son might marry a needy halfwit, although I think that is less likely.
Certain groups of men are fighting hard to force women back into a dependent position. Outlawing abortion was a powerful step in that direction. Now they want to outlaw birth control and no fault divorce. This is a large contingent of men (and women) who are actively trying to force women back into a manufactured state of dependency.
I think it’s important to recognize that this is not an accident. Female dependency was manufactured on purpose and unless it is strenuously and effectively opposed, we will be forced back into submission. They want this. They are angry that women have options.
Many men, quite correctly, fear that if women have a choice they will be left unchosen. Instead of attempting to be more appealing, they opt to literally mobilize a complex political opposition to women’s right to choose. They don’t exactly read as open to the joys of mutuality.
I usually apply C.S. Lewis's quote to this, though he didn't mean it in that way:
"Oh Adam's sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves from all that might do you good."
Right?! It seems so simple to those of us who do it. Make an honest and mutual connection. Support your person in every human way you can, receive support from them. Be strong together so you can go forth and make a beautiful and joyful world.
they'd rather exert pressure\domination politically- vs. introspection to see how they might improve their own life, - then they could bring something to the party vs. just taking it-
To be fair I don’t think the birth control is as much both controlling women as it is society is tired of fatherless children. There’s not a simple way to prevent men from having sex but it’s easier to take birth control away to prevent women from having sex.
This also incentivizes women’s to be more selective of partners which I’d argue is actually more beneficial to women.
They are not fatherless. They just have men who don't support them and that is nothing new.
Society only needs to worry about fatherless children (a biological impossibility) in the context of patriarchal religion and male monopoly of resources.
What’s your point? That’s still how society runs and we need fathers in the home. Most people don’t want to completely change all social structures and turn the whole upside down it causes chaos. However most people want a better society in general and one way to have that is less fatherless children it’s really simple it’s not about controlling women. Women still can choose who they have sex with and condoms still exist. You can also choose not to have sex around ovulation or do oral only etc. You’re not being controlled by losing access to birth control however birth control quite literally does control you
I see you are young. Birth control does not control women. It gives women control
over our fertility. Men, however, have been hell-bent on controlling women for all of recorded history. Forced pregnancy is a very good way to control women. Condoms are a method of birth control that rests entirely with the male. If you were at risk for pregnancy in a country that didn’t allow you to end an undesired pregnancy, in a society with a long history of male-supremacy and frequent rape would you seriously want to put even more reproductive choice into the hands of those who cannot become pregnant?
Women do not always get to choose with whom we have sex or when we have sex. Sexual coercion is not rare. Birth control reduces the impact of sexual coercion, gives women positive control over our own fertility and helps with a variety of gynecological health needs.
I’m 30 lol and I’ve been on birth control an I’ve understood it. It definitely controls you. Naturally you menstruate and it stops that how’s that not control 😂 it changes your mood sometimes causes depression etc. your lying to yourself to pretend it’s freedom.
30 seems pretty young to me! And I don’t think birth control = freedom. Birth control gives women control of our fertility. Honestly, the entire mammalian reproduction system is pretty poorly evolved imo.
In terms of birth control controlling us, I see your point concerning mood swings and menstruation changes. However, mood swings occurred with or without birth control and we menstruate more now than we ever have for all of recorded history. There is a trade-off certainly, but it is a trade we should be able to choose for ourselves.
Get your Andrew Tate ass out.
Every day I watch the birds, many that mate for life, and I wonder why they chose each other and how they make it work - ok their lives are short but it's a poetic thought. In the relationships I have had, some very long ones - it was clear to me that I was no longer a friend as soon as I became a partner. I was slow to see it, because I was still being the friend, thinking like the friend, delivering like the friend - but I wasn't seen as a friend. Something shifts and you find yourself the opponent, the one to put all the anger on, the one to drench in the moods. Next life, I want to be a bird, just to see what that's like. Look how male birds attract their mates, all colourful and ready to serve her. Hmmmm ..... and he gets to be needed by her and knows how to meet those needs perfectly. He sings his heart out with pride in his role, his life. She is his best friend. No rules were made for them. Thank you for the thought provoking essay.
I’ve long been disturbed by the cultural idea that men and women can’t be friends because the man will always want to have sex with the woman. And with the idea that “friendzoning” is the worst insult for men. This implies that the only reason your partner is friends with you is because they are having sex with you. So depressing.
And yes! The birds have it figured out - the male bower birds being the ones to build, cleaning and decorate a space before the woman will mate - peacocks being the ones lugging around long, impractical colorful tails while the peahens are plain looking and unencumbered. A much more sensible approach for the responsibility of impressing to be upon the one who wants it more.
I don't think men want sex more than women do. I think men like to rack up conquests more than women do. When it comes to actual sex, a lot of men don't make much of an effort. They prefer to masturbate to online pornography.
Men have a need to be seen as sexually active more than women. They need the story - ‘this is my wife’ etc. it’s not really about the actual sex. It’s about image.
Right?!
“And with the idea that “friendzoning” is the worst insult for men.”
It’s just because it threatens the role/identity that society tells you must play as a man. Like “you’re not man enough to get to have sex with her”. Again, I think it’s almost completely cultural.
I agree. It’s a status symbol. Wife, partner - when introducing her to someone they might as well be saying ‘this is the person I have sex with.’ I distinctly remember my ex becoming very annoyed with me right after introducing me to someone after we had broken up and he had to just use my first name instead of the claimed title. He also hasn’t even told many people likely because he would feel embarrassed by his single status. He says it’s his story to tell. We were together 30 years but the story is his to tell? Sad.
Yeah. That said though, I don’t think men are the only one responsible for propagating these kinds of role expectations. Not just in the obvious way that, as the article explains, women experience an increase in status when they are in a long term relationship, but also because they might (consciously or not) select mates that behave “manly” (for example the ones that are very self confident) as a display of “this is the man I am in a relationship with”. So in a sense being friendzoned is actually a negative (and self-fullfilling) vote on your own self confidence. What do you think?
I don't personally know any women who chose their husbands because they were manly (not sure if we see that term the same way). My friends who married and had kids didn't experience any lift in status. They didn't seek promotions because they were too busy running their lives, their kids lives and their husbands lives. In my experience woman don't judge other women at all based on whether they are in a relationship or not - I have never looked at a single woman and wondered if she was sexually active or not - I think that's a guy thing. Woman are not valued more for appearing sexually active - amongst women. They are valued for what they bring to the table - they bring value so they are valued. How is asking a guy to be your friend, a guy who you're not attracted to, a reflection of lack of confidence? If anything I think it's the opposite, but also wishful thinking because in my experience there will always be a line crossed or if a woman does enter a relationship with another man, her male friends will distance themselves from her, out of respect not to her - but to the guy. That's not friendship. It becomes obvious what the intent was all along. In my experience...
I've known women who judged other women based on whether they were in a relationship or not, but not whether they had "manly men" or not. Maybe there were a handful of weirdos but it isn't really a thing the way it is with men.
....'the one who wants it more.' Indeed.
Two things can be true at the same time -
1.) If you're attractive at all (and I'm not saying by Hollywood/etc. beauty standards, just reasonably in shape, have a cute face, whatever), yes, most of the non-related men in your life have thought about having sex with you.
2.) Most of those men are also fine if you never have sex and there's no chance of sex.
The needle gradually moves closer to friend and partner the older I got. I’m talking about initial stage.
Wow!! The way you phrased the shift from “friend” to “partner” is something I hope we can unpack further. 🥺 It’s heartbreaking and something that women are CONSTANTLY Gaslit about! Modern marriage is NOT what we’re sold by our husbands and families. I’ll never understand how parents can push their daughters into it (marriage), when they KNOW that she would be happier without it! I remember the EXACT moment I saw the shift from friend to wife. 🤨 I think a lot more young ladies (hell, women of all ages) would leave marriages early (before dependence can be assured😏) if they recognized this and realized that IF that shift occurs, he was never the friend he pretended to be and you’ll NEVER get that version of him back (as long as you’re married to him)
The spouse role absolutely bites for women. Perhaps some got lucky but most seem to have very similar stories. They marry someone they consider their closest friend only to learn that’s where the friendship ends. I think women should take a step back and feel confident that they are dodging a bullet. Maybe that’s the best we can do for men. Let them sort out the why behind their shift in behaviour after they’ve been with a woman for a while. It’s not that they feel trapped because as soon as you open the door to let them be free they are shocked and despondent. I spent way too long trying to understand. THEY need to understand. WE need to get on with our lives.
Exactly. Men supposedly fear commitment and evade being “tied down,” but the same man will be devastated and bitter if his wife divorces him and frees him from the terrible shackles of their marriage.
this is so sharp, Celeste. what stayed with me is the question underneath it all: what keeps women centering long-term partnership at all, given the actual cost? for me, the answer is training. this lives deep in women’s nervous systems and has been passed down across generations. if the statistics keep showing these kinds of costs and women still orient toward long-term partnership with men at a higher rate, that makes me pause. most women have never actually lived inside conditions where choice could fully exist without romantic love with a man being placed at the center.
So true Alexandra and I loved your piece last week about what actually goes on in a woman’s body when she breaks the patriarchal script even slightly - deregulation that keeps her coming back to maintaining the status quo.
i appreciate you saying that, Celeste. this runs so deep, there are so many layers to it. i’m really glad we’re all looking at it from different angles and working through it together. #smashthepatriarchy
Great read. Thank you. This topic wrenches at my soul and at 62 I wonder frequently if it’s time to just stop, give all my energy to the solo space I’ve created since my divorce 16 years ago, nurture female friendships more, and dive deeper into my little grandchildrens’ lives and which I love beyond words.
I’ve managed to survive as a single woman post divorce (career, home, retirement) when that was the greatest fear I had while married and most likely kept me in an unhealthy marriage far too long. I grew up immersed in patriarchal crap and it’s all I knew until my marriage died. I had no other script. So I rebuilt my life brick by brick.
I’ve also had an intimate relationship with a man for 15 years now yet we both live completely separate lives. Our families don’t even know. We get together every now and then for a weekend or a short vacay. Only because we both love sex and have found that to be the most fulfilling aspect of our relationship. Safe, monogamous sex. We are also foodies and until the past year enjoyed political discussions immensely. Our financial habits, health and wellness habits, home care, etc are not compatible at all. The older we get, the more pressure he puts on me to live together. So I can be a housemaid no doubt because that’s exactly what has happened when we have had a long weekend or week at my place — a beautiful home that I maintain 100% financially and physically.
Sigh.
Don’t cave, you’re living the best version for you! Selective companionship ❤️
If you asked him to list any benefits to YOU from living together, I wonder if he could come up with any.
I read that Misogyny book a few months ago and it's a real mind bender. The sheer amount of histrionic, hysterical fear of vaginas was quite wild to read. But also how in basically every primitive society including the supposedly more egalitarian ones, men just put such profound efforts into their attempts to exclude, deceive, and subordinate women, all in an effort to control them and to get to make decisions for them. The sheer terror they seem to feel at the idea of women making decisions for themselves, and extreme lengths they go to in order to control them, was quite astonishing.
Totally. It’s actually a real bummer. And puts today’s manosphere in a sharper light - like ohhh this has been going on for a loooooooong time
Absolutely
The femosphere criticizes the manosphere and men in general, and yet wonders why the manosphere exists (though yes, some of these people, like Andrew Tate, are toxic idiots. The manosphere is a diverse space and quality varies greatly You've got idiots like Tate, fitness influencers, basically helpful people like Jordan Peterson, and people who feature stuff that's simply of interest to men like Joe Rogan).
It’s like you didn’t read anything.
No, I just don't agree.
There was nothing to agree or disagree with.
So there really isn't a femosphere, in the same way. I'm not even sure there is a united feminist sphere. For that matter there is a STRONG difference between men writing about their problems and "the manopshere". There are differences within it but , if your idea of "diversity" is Jordon Peterson, I mean dude. Dude. You need to get out more.
He is a standard bearer. It's him. The mythos rich incels and the Tate wannabe lackwits, who take the lead. I guess the groypers and let's return to male headship are not insignificant but the old,Robert Bly, let's all go and beat our drums in the forest away from the womyn types can hardly be found. Let alone ordinary men who have ordinary issues.
And why?
Because the "manospshere" isn't about finding solutions. Not real ones. It tends to identify male problems and use these as a reason women shouldn't complain, rather than trying to fix them.Or you know actually communicate to individuals where there is a problem. At no point, does it accept as a solution, de-engineering expectations upon men by other men. They even blame feminists for why men are drafted and go to war and not women. Not where it belongs with their fellow men.
The very word toxic masculinity is toxic to them. Never mind it is a word that it is a shorthand for the very unfairness they complain about ie. expectations of masculinity or performances of masculinity that are harmful (toxic) to others or the man himself or more usually both. But the first people to want to keep those expectations are men in the manosphere. Now, you are criticizing men for being men.
It takes away all sympathy. Life is unfair to us. We are strong enough to suffer silently so everyone else should shut up too is not a winning slogan--even if true and it isn't. Trying to dominate everyone isn't going to win friends either. You want people to care? Stop embracing your demons.
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Sadly, this also explains why so many men voted for Trump even though his actions and policies destroy their lives.
my bigger concern is why so many women voted for Trump.
https://youtu.be/GGDpQhGvbE8?si=UsbGTX6lBnU-FgS4
This video is mostly about white women in America voting for DT, but also about the long history pattern, too. I think it might help explain your question.
Excellent video and my sister who is a couple years older than me who still is deeply entrenched in the self-righteousness of the religious right definitely unknowingly has fit right into this mold of the upper middle class white Christian preaching about patriarchy.
“men just put such profound efforts into their attempts to exclude, deceive, and subordinate women, all in an effort to control them”
Makes sense but my question is how much these efforts were actually successful way before the invention of agriculture. Can we really tell? If these efforts were successful shouldn’t this have left some genetic trace?
Well they also just beat them up frequently, which was pretty effective I think!
BRILLIANT research, insights, and analysis Celeste. Our mother died five years ago and our Dad at 92 now sits alone for hours reflecting about living nearly 70 years together. It was tumultuous, to say the least, and they pushed through the frequent emotional chaos (dragging their "kids" along) somehow but Mom was a vastly more emotionally mature, gracious, and encouraging person. Dad was routinely enraged, unpredictable, and inattentive (ADHD?). It wasn't until I was in my 20s, as the oldest sibling, that I realized his violent temper tantrums errupted when he couldn't articulate his intense inner frustrations. Guess how I did? I inherited the dysfunction virus.
My wife and I had a blowout with my parents during a visit in FL after Dad expressed admiration for the Donald and my wife asked him if he wanted his grandsons to be bullies. He replied, "yes". No mystery, then, that the 45 circus with all its garish clowns and monkeys became his and this nation's morality "play". Boo or cheer⁉️
It's awful tough stuff to process. I believe, though, that we must journey onward through our traumas, celebrate our joys, and acknowledge (as you have outlined so well) the shadowy darkness in order to discover how to redeem incongruity and create genuinely cooperative relationships snd communities.
What's your source on "married women are less sexually satisfied than single women", because that sounds extremely wrong. Married people have sex more often than single people, in every survey I've seen. Women find sex with long-term committed partners more satisfying than casual sex, in every survey I've seen
Just about all of the data she cites is cherry picked or contradicted by the lots of other studies.
I was really surprised by the “married women die earlier” stat so clicked though - it’s based on a single study from 2006 looking at data from 1981 - 2002. Author didn’t bother to google “marriage life expectancy effect” and find consensus meta studies clearly show neutral to positive effects on female LE (though male LE effects are higher.)
Irresponsible to put this out (and I don’t even really disagree with the core thesis.)
That stuck out to me, too. I have seen the exact opposite in surveys, and that claim has no links or citations. Similarly, the statement "Single women are the happiest and healthiest subgroup," is unsourced, and from what I've read married men and women are both significantly happier than their single counterparts. https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/08/27/marriage-happiness/
Yes ^
I like the way you emphasize the need for love. Heterosexual people are geared to want and need love and sex from the opposite sex. But for men, what really turns them on is the control and domination of women. I have become convinced that they prefer that to sex or love. I'm not sure whether they can change.
It's amazing to me that despite all the evidence that a relationship with a woman improves their lives, men put so little effort into it. Men's self-destructiveness is astonishing. I sometimes wonder if they are evolutionarily adaptive anymore and if nature will find a way to reduce their number, the same way we see in ant societies, in which most ants are females.
Yes. I think some have the chance to actually love, but are conditioned under the patriarchy to appeal to and impress other men as the most important thing, so dominating women gets them a status symbol (wife and kids) among other men.
It has to be said that this is an astonishingly stupid comment, and represents a fundamental lack of insight into basic psychological reality as well as an unfortunate absence of curiosity about human life as a phenomenon itself. I should probably not try to argue in good faith with someone that writes something called "Feminist Salon", but since you seem to be a good generic example of some frighteningly common views and I have 5 minutes, I might as well bite in this case and have a go since I happen to be here anyways.
First of all, we can address the obvious: To claim that the average man is more concerned with "control and domination of women" than sex or love is just scintillatingly stupid. It is the female equivalent of the equally idiotic idea that the average woman is more concerned with "money and resources" than sex or love. Now everyone is of course different and has his or her individual preferences, but most "dominating" behaviour that you perceive on the part of men is most likely rooted in simple good old existential insecurity. Contrary to what is depicted in popular culture (at least up until about 2016), the average man on the younger side of things is terribly insecure in regards to his attractiveness to women. Any form of relationship in the younger years often tends to coincide with the years in which the average woman has peak potential sexual agency and receives the most attention that she will ever receive. It really is not that deep: a man is scared of losing someone that he cares about (and yes, which he knows that he can get sex and/or love from), and does not want to lose her. In some cases this gives rise to reprehensible, "controlling" behaviour. In other cases it gives rise to poetry. It should be noted that the exact same insecurity gives rise to a lot of bat-shit crazy female behaviour.
Secondly there is in general very poor understanding of the psychological differences between the sexes from both men and women, of which your original comment is a perfect exhibition. It is true that most women are able to obtain the feeling of "being seen" through their friendships, while male friendships function on completely different principles. It is largely only through relationships with women that most men are able to obtain the same feeling. On the flipside, most male friendships are pretty innocent and genuine when they arise, and can take on a real unique depth. Most female friendships are not really based on anything very deep, and can quickly become incredibly dysfunctional (and "toxic", as the young'uns say today). But again, everyone is ultimately unique. Your belief that men putting so little effort into relationships is "self-destructive" unfortunately applies just as well to the female side. I happen to be a man, and have seen first hand the benefit that a woman can gain from a relationship with a competent man. People are meant to complement each other psychologically, and a world that consisted only of female humans would be just as dysfunctional as a world that consisted only of male humans. It would also be a pretty boring world to live in.
Thirdly, it always has to be acknowledged that many of these beliefs arise in circumstances of unprecedented modern luxury. If the electricity went out and did not come back on, it is unlikely that any of this rhetoric would last for more than 3 minutes. It also becomes a different game as soon as pregnancy and children become involved, which is often strikingly absent from any of the general discussions of these issues.
Ultimately I pity anyone that views life and relationships in this way; it is a very low-quality existence in comparison to what is possible. Perhaps it is just my artist brain on the loose, but I am proud to say that I will never personally experience life through this filter.
"On the flipside, most male friendships are pretty innocent and genuine when they arise, and can take on a real unique depth. Most female friendships are not really based on anything very deep, and can quickly become incredibly dysfunctional"
Yeah, that told me everything I needed to know about you. Did you even read the article at all? Or just skimmed it so you could argue your bullshit, 5th grade thoughts about male vs. female friendships?
Obviously I read the article, and while something that I write here clearly has you upset, you do not attempt to articulate what it is wrong about my claims but come rather with a quite weak attempt at a personal insult. You should be able to insult someone better than relating his or her level of intelligence to a 5th grader; come on.
Anyways. It is indisputable that there are fundamental differences between male and female friendships. Men tend to form friendships based around common interests and doing tasks. Competition tends to be based on competence, which you either have or you don't. Most men tend to "know their place". Women on the other hand tend to form friendships based around mutual support groups and the desire for consensus. Their competition is intensely interpersonal and social, and as a result you get this situation quite often where women will pretend to be friends, use each other for emotional support, and then viciously attack them socially when the opportunity arises (I remember that the film "Mean Girls" is quite a comical depiction of this dynamic, if you are old enough to have watched it as a teenager).
Again, everyone is different at the end of the day. There are though undeniable commonalities between the genders which we all know exist. For what it is worth, I grew up with 3 sisters. The gossip that I got to hear was insane. I do not think that I have on the other hand ever myself said anything about a male friend of mine that has not been to his face.
You base your entire knowledge of women on your dysfunctional family. That's pretty funny. Many women including myself do not gossip; that's a stereotype men have about us. A minority of women are highly competitive regarding attracting male attention but in my experience even those women often like to have female friends; they just keep their female friendships separate from their dating lives. Almost no woman I have ever known "pretended" to be friends with another woman. Some women don't value their female friendships but that's because society has taught them that they need a man to live and they therefore put all their energy into attracting and keeping a man. And I know many men who hate male competitiveness.
Very little of what you write here is of any significance to my previous claims.
Obviously most women like to have female friends (and many place a lot of value on these relationships), in the same way that most men like to have friends. That is just called being a human being with healthy desires. Friendships have nothing at all to do with dating necessarily; the point being made was that women get different things in general out of their female friendships than men do out of their male friendships (you admitted this yourself, and you are right).
Your claim that women do not pretend to be friends with other women is just laughable. If it was generally the case that women did not talk about each other behind each others’ backs, a considerable amount of the media produced in the past 30-50 years would not resonate with anyone. Half of Instagram right now consists of young women making videos about the difficulties they have in dealing with their «besties». Maybe you as an individual are somehow completely removed from it, but the stereotype exists for a reason. There are obviously a lot of fake, weak male friendships too, but my argument is that these are much less common because male friendships tend not to involve sexual competition to the same degree and tend to be based upon much different forces in comparison to women. Both men and women compete heavily for attention in different ways, and it can be hard on anyone at times.
I have no idea what world you live in, but in the world where I happen to exist women have been told en masse that «needing a man to live» is akin to a crime, that they should be single and independent at all costs (which ironically leads to many women being dependent on a male employer to whom they have no relation and the vagaries of a job market, but that is another issue), and that they should avoid having a family if at all possible. It is unfortunate, because I cannot see anyone living like this and having a satisfying life.
Not persuasive.
So it’s ok for a younger man to control a woman because he’s insecure. Ok. I don’t need to hear anything more from you.
Not once in the entire comment did I ever even imply that any of this behaviour was "ok". If this is how you respond, then you demonstrate further that you are not very smart and simply not worth any more of my time. I tried!
Where did he say it was okay?
love the ant analogy!
This is really well reasoned and I love the Steinem quote.
It makes sense too, when you think of it. Think of your behaviour when you need something. Say you NEED food - you are starving. What would you do to get it? No judgement here - just think what you would do. And how it would make you feel. And how it would impact society.
Then say you WANT food. What do you do? How does it feel? How does it impact society?
None of us benefit from people being in NEED. But wanting things is delightful, especially when you figure out how to obtain them (that dream job, dream house, perfect meal… mmmm!) So men shouldn’t be trying to make women need them again. We want them plenty and that’s glorious. And we don’t want men to need us. It’s not in our best interest!But wouldn’t it be delightful for them to want us?
And this is why I agree with Steinem. Only when we both want each other, completely free from the behaviour need brings out, can we really find love.
Just wanted to add the obvious: this is far from the only reason dating is hard, because MLM and WLW dating is hard too, y’all. But, you are also not wrong that this problem of gendered inequality and asymmetrical need is a big problem that is not being talked about enough. (And you know, not all queer people are immune to that, either, since we’re raised in heteronormative culture and all.)
Nailed it as usual!! I love men but no longer willing to contort myself to “get” one. Life is so, so good.
Stay that way…please!!
Saint Celeste-
"Every few months I get the urge to dig Jean-Jacques out of his grave to let him know that yet another of his declarations about gender has proved to be incorrect."
😇