I only raised an eyebrow when they proceeded to call contemporary men "unmarriagable," stating that women are starting to ask themselves why men are even there if they earn less.
A few things interested me about this conversation:
-This conversation went on for ten minutes and not once did I hear these women use words like "love", "we" or "compromise."
-There was only ONE man involved in this panel and it was Joe Scarborough, who, unlike his Republican colleagues, is a master at pandering to a large group of women, whining about how there are no good men other than his son.
-The discussion was ended by celebrating divorce rates being high in America.
It reminded me of a discussion I was in with a couple of dear female friends where we debated the "men ain't sh**" myth. Much like in the video, there were a lot of "I"s as if men were the Occupy Movement (times are hard/relationships are a team) and women were the Tea Party (goddamned hippies want all my stuff/men are just lazy freeloaders). Of course, in feverish disgreement, I protested that there are hard working men out there who go unappreciated and marginalized. As predicted, I was patted on the head and told that I was "the exception." This is usually the part where the choir goes right back to singing about how horrible men are.
Then, I thought of an average date these days. The women ask a lot about my day job, my side ventures, what my parents did, where they went to school, whether or not I have a car, etc. Very rarely is there any attempt to get a feel for mindset, personality, common interests. After that, there's a lot of her talking about herself. It sounds more like she's rattling off the bullet points of her resume at a job interview. It's very nice that you were in the peace corps for two years, worked for some premier law firm in Washington and made triage tents out of genuine alpaca in Somalia, but who the fuck are YOU?
This all concerns me because there seems to be no positive representation of good working class men anymore. You're either a CEO or you're Tiny Tim (although Tyler Perry might throw in the ex-convict trope just to shake things up). In fact, if an unsuspecting listener were to follow the logic laid out by their complaining, they would think the only things men are needed for are sex, buying dinner, the occasional Facebook photo and conceiving children. It sounds like those Greek myths of the Amazons who only used men to procreate and did away with them afterwards.
A male friend of mine pointed out how bizarre it is that "marrying up" seems to be a more conceivable concept to this sect of women as their tax bracket goes up. You would think it would become less relevant, but the dreaded double standard rears its ugly head. Now, it's fair to say that men have perpetuated double standards for ages, but it still doesn't make sense for a woman to assimilate those same double standards into their own ideology because it only makes them just as bad....not better. I'm always going on about how "Love is a grown up" but it's also two people SHARING their lives together regardless of status or annual income.
The sad truth is that the void these women describe in their lives, their requirements for commitment....they don't want a man. They want a concubine.
