Kay S. Hymowitz
Love in the Time of Darwinism
A report from the chaotic postfeminist dating scene, where only the strong survive
Autumn 2008
Earlier this year, I published an article in City Journal called “Child-Man in the Promised Land.” The piece elicited a roaring flood of mailed and blogged responses, mostly from young men who didn’t much care for its title (a reference to Claude Brown’s 1965 novel Manchild in the Promised Land) or its thesis: that too many single young males (SYMs) were lingering in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood, shunning marriage and children, and whiling away their leisure hours with South Park reruns, marathon sessions of World of Warcraft, and Maxim lists of the ten best movie fart scenes.

It would be easy enough to hold up some of the callow ranting that the piece inspired as proof positive of the child-man’s existence. But the truth is that my correspondents’ objections gave me pause. Their argument, in effect, was that the SYM is putting off traditional markers of adulthood—one wife, two kids, three bathrooms—not because he’s immature but because he’s angry. He’s angry because he thinks that young women are dishonest, self-involved, slutty, manipulative, shallow, controlling, and gold-digging. He’s angry because he thinks that the culture disses all things male. He’s angry because he thinks that marriage these days is a raw deal for men.

Here’s Jeff from Middleburg, Florida: “I am not going to hitch my wagon to a woman . . . who is more into her abs, thighs, triceps, and plastic surgery. A woman who seems to have forgotten that she did graduate high school and that it’s time to act accordingly.” Jeff, meet another of my respondents, Alex: “Maybe we turn to video games not because we are trying to run away from the responsibilities of a ‘grown-up life’ but because they are a better companion than some disease-ridden bar tramp who is only after money and a free ride.” Care for one more? This is from Dean in California: “Men are finally waking up to the ever-present fact that traditional marriage, or a committed relationship, with its accompanying socially imposed requirements of being wallets with legs for women, is an empty and meaningless drudgery.” You can find the same themes posted throughout websites like AmericanWomenSuck, NoMarriage, MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way), and Eternal Bachelor (“Give modern women the husband they deserve. None”).

The reason for all this anger, I submit, is that the dating and mating scene is in chaos. SYMs of the postfeminist era are moving around in a Babel of miscues, cross-purposes, and half-conscious, contradictory female expectations that are alternately proudly egalitarian and coyly traditional. And because middle-class men and women are putting off marriage well into their twenties and thirties as they pursue Ph.D.s, J.D.s, or their first $50,000 salaries, the opportunities for heartbreak and humiliation are legion. Under these harsh conditions, young men are looking for a new framework for understanding what (or, as they might put it, WTF) women want. So far, their answer is unlikely to satisfy anyone—either women or, in the long run, themselves.

more at: http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_4_darwinist_dating.html

Long article. The only disagreement I have is that, from personal experience, the women are just as big "jerks" as the men they referred to. I can't remember the last time I was on a date with some mindless skank that didn't ask me within 30 minutes how many women I slept with. And all they have to say, despite a 4-year degree, is what happened on a rerun of friends, or Family Guy. So you look for a "nerd" thinking she'll be a nice girl? Nope, they're more obsessed with appearance than the rest. Only, their own and other girls'. Constantly about this woman or that is so much better.

Decent women do exist, however. One of my friends is married to one. There was one or two others I've met, I think. The cool thing about where I am, is the whores learn early by 19 or so, that the douchebag with the black hat and sagging shorts with skater shoes, a body full of tattoos, working out upper body 4 hours a day with zero stamina and chicken legs, whom happens to be father to their children, isn't much of a man. I know a guy who actually sets a limit of 5 years with any woman, kids or not. And usually has 2 or 3 at a time, and lives with one... proudly.

Just saw a girl on a dating site 5 months pregnant! Idiocracy covered it pretty well, I think.