Do you agree or disagree that feminism has failed women? (enemies, drug)

[Sonic_Spork]

This forum (the whole thing, and mostly Relationships over the years) is where I have seen more of the "gender wars" conversations than anywhere in my life. There have been concepts I started chewing on a decade ago here that are just starting to pop up on Facebook as though they're new ideas. They're not. Once in a while we get a new spin on things, but it's just the same old stuff mostly.

But thanks to good ol' City Data at least I've got a pretty solid position on all of it.

I have never called myself a feminist. There are a few reasons for that. Main one being that my intended listener, audience or debate opponent is going to bring whatever idea they've got of the word and project it all over me and that is unlikely to be accurate. I've had friends who identified as such and who said that my opinions make me a feminist also, but I really just don't have much luck with labels. Besides which, my female-ness is not a huge part of my identity or a massive point of pride for me. I don't want to be a man, I'm just like...I don't care. The universe told me "you live this life as a woman" and I said, "OK. Sure, that's fine." Despite the baffling at times behavior of the men I've encountered in life, I consider it to be one of the least interesting things about me. I do not stand in solidarity with all women, some women are awful. As are many men. But many people are great, too. I like people in general a lot but not in a blind way, and I can't imagine "identifying with" or taking sides automatically with someone just because they look like me or something.

I prefer "humanist."

Has feminism "failed women?" I guess in one sense, sort of. I know it wasn't deliberate of anybody, and maybe it's more accurate to point at capitalism if we're blaming an "ism" for a problem here...but with more households having two incomes, the vultures smelled more green paper "meat" and started snatching bigger and bigger bites. Greed is infinite. If the perception is that people have more labor to give to capital, and more income to be disposed of, more resources that the suits can grab at...they're bound to do it. No way were two people going to work and have extra savings to pass on to the next generation, we'd get to a point where a Mom having a career was no longer a choice but a necessity...and then where even that was impossible due to the high cost of childcare and rent, so two young people both have to work to survive and STILL can't afford to have kids. Or at least that's how they see it. Not if they want to reach for a decent standard of living. No, they do not want to live in a tar paper shack with no modern conveniences just so that they can breed. So sue them.

And frankly since the intense pressures have mounted to be perfect parents, give our kids perfect childhoods, raise perfect kids who are supposedly going to be such great adults but who in fact keep leeching off of us well into young adulthood now... Being a Mom is more thankless than ever. And the men I know who want most to breed offspring don't really want to be involved in raising them. They just want them to exist. If they are present in their kids' lives, then they don't want to do any of the work...not to provide adequately, and not to help with the domestic labor. And if the "baby mama" leaves them, they don't want to pay child support either. Just like how some demand that if a woman have sex, she should be made to reproduce, but don't want any kind of support or help for the kids once they are born... Seems some are just motivated to make women suffer and sacrifice our lives.

There's no ultimate "win" to having kids, unless you get very, very lucky. Sure, they are cute when they're little and they fill up your heart for some years...but that's just nature and neurochemicals.

In the bigger economic picture, it's a high risk investment. With a very good chance that you dump literal millions (at least in my case, and we were lower middle class income, but I've gathered and analyzed the data and it really adds up over the years....even before I consider what it could have grown to if that money had been invested instead!)...into raising our kids, and still end up broke and alone at the end of our lives in a Medicaid nursing home. The only reason I dare hope that my fate may not be so dire, is that I remarried a man a generation older than me and he inherited some money, so there is a chance...not a certainty, but a chance...that this enables him and then me to be cared for one day. I sure as hell do not expect my kids to be there for me, I'll be happy if they ever manage to figure out how to support themselves. At 22 and 24, they are nowhere near it.

Thing is...it's a fact that you can't count on anyone but yourself in this life, ultimately. Society has hammered in the message and we got it loud and clear. Any suffering you have experienced is ultimately somehow your own fault. So if you want a good life, you must make it for yourself. And a "good life" requires money. Hell, LIFE requires money. Men don't want us looking to them for that, so we have to do what it takes to build our own security to the best of our ability.

And yet. We still want to be loved. Most of us by men. And many still would like to have children, if we can find the right man. But who is the right man? The angry dudes on the internet say he's "Chad" and he's got to be tall, good looking, and rich. I don't think that's true. I think he's got to be somewhere north of hideous, financially stable, and not a person of odious character (which may be the most important, and disqualifies more men than anything else.) Hygienic, not an addict, and not someone who seems to hate women. Not someone who will make our lives hell.

And who do WE have to be, in order to appeal to that guy? The one who has his head on straight and is financially stable and does not spend all his time drinking, drugging, or zoned out on video games and porn? The one who is able to live in the same reality as we live in? Well, WE have to be on his level. Good looking, good company, not addicts, financially stable. Because he's not looking for an anchor to drag around. Not a ton of people have those boxes checked right out of the gate in early adulthood. So young women have a choice...they can enter into a bad relationship with someone who does not have their act together, or they can wait and get their act together so as to appeal to a man who does.

But yes...the years are ticking by and if we wait too long, reproduction becomes more dangerous and difficult. Not to mention how many young men who don't get what they want when they have not done the work to deserve it, turn to anger and loathing and take themselves right out of the pool. Because yeah, if your head is full of nastiness, you DO have to be exceptionally good looking or rich for a woman to put up with your crap, so it's a self-fulfilling prophecy fueled by a lack of self awareness.

Then of course you get all the politics mixed into the stew. Replacement theory, grievance rhetoric, divisive propaganda, and the urgings of those who think of society as a great herd of stupid beasts who must be guided if not controlled by their "betters." None of that is good for women OR for men. All the talk of "biology" and "nature" though...sounds a lot like demands that we, women specifically and not men, accept being treated as livestock. Well just about every woman I know of feels that it's important to be seen as a person, as much as a man is. So where feminism may have squeezed us economically, it's given us many more ways in which to earn our entitlement to personhood. And if the men of our society want to see this as a zero sum game and throw an angry little tantrum about it, well I suppose that is their prerogative but I sure as hell don't see how that helps anyone find love.

And since I happen to know in real life, a man who has taken all the red pill poison to heart...his position really does boil down to "I should be permitted to be an a-hole to everyone and they should still love me, give me everything I need and want, and when they don't, it's because they are selfish and terrible." The notion that his actions have consequences doesn't seem to be something he can get his head around. I hear a lot of this in the voices of people who are angry about feminism.

If I had it all to do over again, I think I'd probably risk being "alone" (lol not really, because I can make friends and a lack of husband and kids never had to mean actual solitude) rather than the years I spent shackled to a bad husband trying to raise kids who would later refuse to even try to support themselves. Ah, but I could have chosen a better man! Except that I couldn't have, because I was not stable in my youth and no stable man wanted me then. For every woman who gets lucky and it all works out, there are many like me who pay a very excessive cost for choosing to pair up with whoever will have us when young, and having his kids.

[DesertRat56]

Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork

This forum ...
If I had it all to do over again, I think I'd probably risk being "alone" (lol not really, because I can make friends and a lack of husband and kids never had to mean actual solitude) rather than the years I spent shackled to a bad husband trying to raise kids who would later refuse to even try to support themselves. Ah, but I could have chosen a better man! Except that I couldn't have, because I was not stable in my youth and no stable man wanted me then. For every woman who gets lucky and it all works out, there are many like me who pay a very excessive cost for choosing to pair up with whoever will have us when young, and having his kids.

Your last paragraph is what I want to address. My sister has a saying "her picker is broken", and for her that is true for me, her daughters and one of my daughters. However, she was first married to a man who beat her. She got out of that marriage with a lot of help from her family and her current husband. He is a good man and if any of us had waited to even think about marriage until we had ourselves straightened out we might have found a good man like him too. But some of us (my daughter, my neice and I) have decided we did our bit, we have our kids and don't need a man to help us raise them. So, my sister, being very religious and old fashioned thinking, thinks there is something wrong with us. There isn't. We learned from a mistake and decided we would try different mistakes to learn from. There is a program against women still that encourages judgment about whether a woman has a man who is not related to her in her life, a lover or husband. Some of us can function fine without that. If a woman can't then there is nothing wrong with her looking for a suitable mate once she has reached the age of reason (25 or 26). Pushing girls to marry young is wrong and always has been, but it was used as a way to control women as a whole in the past. Now we have choices and judgement is individual and up to us to ignore.

There is no one size fits all when it comes to humans.

As for men good men not wanting immature women, it is also difficult to find a secure enough man to want a woman who is not insecure or easily manipulated.

[BECLAZONE]

It has also destroyed the lives of male children, and then the men they should have grown up to be. I can't stand any ism, since as a male child I had no rights, and was undeserving of any kind of emotion, other than derision that is, towards me. Every ism I see, is a hate group, but often an encouraged, and popular group, at that.

[Sonic_Spork]

Originally Posted by DesertRat56

Your last paragraph is what I want to address. My sister has a saying "her picker is broken", and for her that is true for me, her daughters and one of my daughters. However, she was first married to a man who beat her. She got out of that marriage with a lot of help from her family and her current husband. He is a good man and if any of us had waited to even think about marriage until we had ourselves straightened out we might have found a good man like him too. But some of us (my daughter, my neice and I) have decided we did our bit, we have our kids and don't need a man to help us raise them. So, my sister, being very religious and old fashioned thinking, thinks there is something wrong with us. There isn't. We learned from a mistake and decided we would try different mistakes to learn from. There is a program against women still that encourages judgment about whether a woman has a man who is not related to her in her life, a lover or husband. Some of us can function fine without that. If a woman can't then there is nothing wrong with her looking for a suitable mate once she has reached the age of reason (25 or 26). Pushing girls to marry young is wrong and always has been, but it was used as a way to control women as a whole in the past. Now we have choices and judgement is individual and up to us to ignore.

There is no one size fits all when it comes to humans.

As for men good men not wanting immature women, it is also difficult to find a secure enough man to want a woman who is not insecure or easily manipulated.

If I'd had support or guidance from my family, I would have left my ex probably during my first pregnancy. That's where I remember having the first moment of really understanding the gravity and awfulness of my situation. But I did not have that, I had no better way to survive (barely) at that point. Later we moved to where his family lived and I had this sense that I had to impress them, and that to be a good mother, I had to keep my family together and must not fail to perform the role of mother to the utmost. That it was my job to control his behavior and manage his emotions (when he was in a mood to rant, I had to get him to go out of the house away from the kids, and maintain the illusion to the kids that everything was fine.) I had to coach him endlessly on how to act at work so as not to get fired, I even intervened with his command when he was in the Army and saved his career once. If I failed it was my fault and if he failed it was also my fault, and if the kids failed it was my fault...I had to carry everyone. But I was pretty determined to do it, until it reached a point I no longer could, and where his behavior became seriously unsafe and terrifying.

I wanted to get the kids raised before I looked at a decision to leave him. I only made it until they were 13 and 15.

But the thing is...I can't say that I did not see the many red flags in the early days, before I got pregnant and stuck... I did. I was just too young to understand what they would mean for me. Surely I had all the time in the world to correct any mistakes, and the future was nebulous and abstract. I had no way to comprehend what "you will pay for this for the rest of your life" would mean...nor even the concept of "the rest of my life" in the decades and decades. I lacked the ability to understand it. He'd been married twice before me (he was 29) and I seriously thought that those other two women just were not smart enough or strong enough to handle him and make a good life with him. That I could do better, and I'd show everyone. This of course was reinforced by his insistence that his prior two wives were terrible and crazy and all that. And he conveniently didn't tell me that he'd emptied the clip of a handgun into the wall next to his last wife's head during an argument. She did not bother to tell me that until after I'd left him all those years later, either. But would it have gotten through to me, when nothing else had? I can't say.

At 18 my brain was seriously impaired in the making of choices department.

It would have been better if I'd been able to wait until I was 25 or 30 or even 35 before doing anything that bound me to someone with a life long promise and the ties of blood. The aging of my uterus would not have put me at more peril than my immature brain did.

And then the wonderful, peaceful, stable people available to me who wanted me when I was 36...yeah, none of them wanted kids. I remarried and I am SO. HAPPY. And my child free friends, none of them are alone or miserable. They are living the good life. No, society did not "brainwash them" into thinking that luxury spa vacations were better than having kids....they actually freaking are, much of the time. I told myself when my kids were young that devoting my life to them was the most fulfilling possible thing and that selfish pursuits were ultimately empty, but you know...as soon as the hormonal fog of being mama bear to two small children cleared out... I mean, if my kids were doing alright now, every sacrifice I could say was worth it. But they aren't and I don't know if they ever will be. And so I do resent the millions of dollars and the time and energy I devoted to them, that has not paid off. I do feel it could have been put to better use. And no, it would not have been better for them if I'd been a stay at home Mom, either. Why? Because their father was not stable enough to reliably provide. Again...who I could get at 18? That.

Money actually can buy you a hell of a lot of happiness. And while you may not have kids to leave it to, there are plenty of causes out there and hell you could always meet a low income family with a promising youngster and pay their way through college like my Great Aunt did. Successful career women with no kids are NOT miserable, solitary cat ladies in middle or old age. Not at all. They've got the means to go forth and find whoever they want to be their companions.

That's just sour grapes talk from men. I have never heard more than a bit of a wistful "what if" from such a woman now and then...quickly brushed aside. Now the ones who did NOT have successful careers, or who got taken advantage of by other family members and who did not accumulate the resources to have a decent life for themselves? They have regrets. Their lives are not happy and they can imagine any number of reasons why. But a bad relationship is never, ever better than no relationship at all.

[Mike from back east]

Spork hit some nails right on the head with that latest post, and since some others have mentioned toxic husbands I think it's time for me to digress a bit to address what's been written.

Millions of girls grow up in homes where the father is a drinker. These girls get used to walking on eggs and tip-toeing around their fathers so they don't set him off into abusive screaming fits, or worse. Often worse.

Many of these girls marry too young, partly to get out of such dysfunctional homes. They don't know better, especially in their teens. In millions of cases they marry drinkers, guys who remind them of their fathers; it feels like home, and for many girls these drinking dudes are the only role model they know much about. For many of these girls their lives then go downhill from there. Many of them have a poor understanding of the larger world, they think their role is to be a cheerful Pillsbury SAHM baking cookies in a house on the lane with 2.5 kids, dog, and white picket fence around their little haven. Barf.

The book "Women Who Love Too Much" by Dr. Robin Norwood explains this dynamic very well. In a nutshell, these girls get used to walking on eggs so they don't set their fathers off into abusive tantrums, or violence. But when they meet nice guys they don't feel the same uneasy tension they feel around Dad.

With nice guys they don't need to tiptoe around a volcanic temper, so what they say after dating nice guys who treat them well is "I didn't feel any sparks." But when they meet drinkers they feel right at home, they feel the tensions, they feel the sparks and it's a case of "I know this dance." Way too often, usually from their own lack of mature awareness, these young girls get enmeshed with bad actors and end up in misery. I know. I have 3 sisters who married a total of 7 husbands, 5 of which who were toxic types. Two of those sisters never finished high school; none went to college. Their view of the world was that men drink and work in factories if not going off to war.

Two of my 3 sisters finally figured it out and one of them finally married a really nice guy her 3rd time around; it lasted many years until she passed in 2014 from lung cancer, even though she gave up smoking a good 20 years before.

In the late 1980s I sat in a 12-step program for Adult Children Of Alcoholics (ACOA) and recall a woman saying she'd walk into a bar, see decent looking guys, but zero in a guy who was falling-off-his-barstool drunk -- it felt familiar, just like dear old dad, she was needed there, she could help, it was her calling, fixer uppers were her realm.

Some days I think every marriage license should come with it's own built-in psychologist. Better yet, couples ought to have at least a half dozen sessions with a psychologist or counselor before a marriage license is issued, we'd save a lot of grief and pain.

Knowing the misery out there for millions of women, my wish is they avoid marriage until their mid-20s and get a better education or at least get out into the real world to see enough of it to know who/what are good choices and who/what are not.

Back on topic, I think one result of the feminist movement has been a dampening effect on teen girls desire to jump into marriage and babies, enough so that many now wait to marry, if at all, many have gone on to better educations, and many are no longer living in the misery that I've seen in my own family.

We really need to do something to steer a lot of young men away from the old views of male roles, to one that based more on partnership, and not the tyrannical patriarchy of generations past, keeping in mind that there's no one-size fits all solution but there is a myriad of better ways to live our lives.

[MKTwet]

Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork

Has feminism "failed women?" I guess in one sense, sort of. I know it wasn't deliberate of anybody, and maybe it's more accurate to point at capitalism if we're blaming an "ism" for a problem here...but with more households having two incomes, the vultures smelled more green paper "meat" and started snatching bigger and bigger bites. Greed is infinite. If the perception is that people have more labor to give to capital, and more income to be disposed of, more resources that the suits can grab at...they're bound to do it. No way were two people going to work and have extra savings to pass on to the next generation, we'd get to a point where a Mom having a career was no longer a choice but a necessity...and then where even that was impossible due to the high cost of childcare and rent, so two young people both have to work to survive and STILL can't afford to have kids. Or at least that's how they see it. Not if they want to reach for a decent standard of living. No, they do not want to live in a tar paper shack with no modern conveniences just so that they can breed. So sue them.

Feminism failed women because now it's consider necessary like you said for women to get educated, have a career while still responsible with the burden of raising a child and risk pausing their career. Is that a good expectation to achieve? How about many GenZ men who still believes raising a family together is fine if he only has to contribute 50% of his finances while the women has to contribute 50% and her body with producing children. How is that a fair deal? Majority of GenZ males thinks financial burden should be split equitably and he still needs to be treated like your "his" woman.

Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork

And frankly since the intense pressures have mounted to be perfect parents, give our kids perfect childhoods, raise perfect kids who are supposedly going to be such great adults but who in fact keep leeching off of us well into young adulthood now... Being a Mom is more thankless than ever. And the men I know who want most to breed offspring don't really want to be involved in raising them. They just want them to exist. If they are present in their kids' lives, then they don't want to do any of the work...not to provide adequately, and not to help with the domestic labor. And if the "baby mama" leaves them, they don't want to pay child support either. Just like how some demand that if a woman have sex, she should be made to reproduce, but don't want any kind of support or help for the kids once they are born... Seems some are just motivated to make women suffer and sacrifice our lives.

I am just amazed and appalled with seeing younger couples split the bill down to the penny using apps when paying for family use items. My relatives, I see the woman has to work (remotely) while taking the kids to school and to medical while the man simply goes to work and occasionally deals with the heavy lifting duties while both sides manage their own financial portfolios.

In many situations that I deal with as a landlord, the woman pays the rent and the man is just a supporting character in the relationship.

I gotta love GenZ woman these days! Equality and feminism is great for men.

Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork

Thing is...it's a fact that you can't count on anyone but yourself in this life, ultimately. Society has hammered in the message and we got it loud and clear. Any suffering you have experienced is ultimately somehow your own fault. So if you want a good life, you must make it for yourself. And a "good life" requires money. Hell, LIFE requires money. Men don't want us looking to them for that, so we have to do what it takes to build our own security to the best of our ability.

And yet. We still want to be loved. Most of us by men. And many still would like to have children, if we can find the right man. But who is the right man? The angry dudes on the internet say he's "Chad" and he's got to be tall, good looking, and rich. I don't think that's true. I think he's got to be somewhere north of hideous, financially stable, and not a person of odious character (which may be the most important, and disqualifies more men than anything else.) Hygienic, not an addict, and not someone who seems to hate women. Not someone who will make our lives hell.

The right man is someone like your father, unfortunately all these men today are just man child. With broken families usually a man has 2 divorced parents who wants to make sure that he gets to be with a woman enjoy all the benefits including shared expenses and NOT have to marry the woman. Then as she gets too old and they don't have a child. The man feels he finally matured and wants to start a family, he bails leaving the woman around 35-38 years old and the woman with the broken heart is scrambling to find a replacement man and no men from 25-40 will automatically wants to marry a woman this late and even with a great job she will end up settling for some junior analyst or Graduate Student still working on his doctorate. The dating pool is getting larger these days, every bumble profile features women in her late 30s looking to settle down finally and 50/50 wants a kid. I guess egg prices are dropping.

Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork

]
And who do WE have to be, in order to appeal to that guy? The one who has his head on straight and is financially stable and does not spend all his time drinking, drugging, or zoned out on video games and porn? The one who is able to live in the same reality as we live in? Well, WE have to be on his level. Good looking, good company, not addicts, financially stable. Because he's not looking for an anchor to drag around. Not a ton of people have those boxes checked right out of the gate in early adulthood. So young women have a choice...they can enter into a bad relationship with someone who does not have their act together, or they can wait and get their act together so as to appeal to a man who does.

This is playing roulette here, once you are running low on chips your only bet left is to go all in on one shot. That's what I'm seeing in the dating pool.

Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork

But yes...the years are ticking by and if we wait too long, reproduction becomes more dangerous and difficult. Not to mention how many young men who don't get what they want when they have not done the work to deserve it, turn to anger and loathing and take themselves right out of the pool. Because yeah, if your head is full of nastiness, you DO have to be exceptionally good looking or rich for a woman to put up with your crap, so it's a self-fulfilling prophecy fueled by a lack of self awareness.

This is why as a man over 45 and accomplished, my dating pool is growing. I would never imagine seeing 25-29 yr olds in the mix and I though I had to settle for women in the high 30s but instead I'm getting tons of women in their late 20s and early 30s looking for a traditional man with traditional values to be with.

Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork

Then of course you get all the politics mixed into the stew. Replacement theory, grievance rhetoric, divisive propaganda, and the urgings of those who think of society as a great herd of stupid beasts who must be guided if not controlled by their "betters." None of that is good for women OR for men. All the talk of "biology" and "nature" though...sounds a lot like demands that we, women specifically and not men, accept being treated as livestock. Well just about every woman I know of feels that it's important to be seen as a person, as much as a man is. So where feminism may have squeezed us economically, it's given us many more ways in which to earn our entitlement to personhood. And if the men of our society want to see this as a zero sum game and throw an angry little tantrum about it, well I suppose that is their prerogative but I sure as hell don't see how that helps anyone find love.

As long as there are many ignorant feminists willing to play this game because they haven't figured it out yet they will always lose to the house.

Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork

And since I happen to know in real life, a man who has taken all the red pill poison to heart...his position really does boil down to "I should be permitted to be an a-hole to everyone and they should still love me, give me everything I need and want, and when they don't, it's because they are selfish and terrible." The notion that his actions have consequences doesn't seem to be something he can get his head around. I hear a lot of this in the voices of people who are angry about feminism.

I'm not angry about feminism, I find such a huge irony watching it play itself out. And like I said, nature intended for us to be who we were meant to be. Whether a woman would rather be childless or alone without a man. It doesn't matter, nature will balance itself out.

Whomever declares "I don't need a man, I don't want children." Think about how you arrive at this declaration and retrace. What a price you've paid and bargained for.

[Sonic_Spork]

Originally Posted by MKTwet

Feminism failed women because now it's consider necessary like you said for women to get educated, have a career while still responsible with the burden of raising a child and risk pausing their career. Is that a good expectation to achieve? How about many GenZ men who still believes raising a family together is fine if he only has to contribute 50% of his finances while the women has to contribute 50% and her body with producing children. How is that a fair deal? Majority of GenZ males thinks financial burden should be split equitably and he still needs to be treated like your "his" woman.

It's not a fair deal, which is why a lot of women don't want it. At least those who are old enough to know better. Young people will always make young-person mistakes of all kinds.

I am just amazed and appalled with seeing younger couples split the bill down to the penny using apps when paying for family use items. My relatives, I see the woman has to work (remotely) while taking the kids to school and to medical while the man simply goes to work and occasionally deals with the heavy lifting duties while both sides manage their own financial portfolios.

In many situations that I deal with as a landlord, the woman pays the rent and the man is just a supporting character in the relationship.

I gotta love GenZ woman these days! Equality and feminism is great for men.

Truly the bar is not that high. I am happy as can be with my second husband. Because he is loving and thoughtful and peaceful. He does not yell at me, he's not insecure, he doesn't stress me out. When we met, I had the big career money coming in and he made 1/3 of what I did, but his job was stable and he was frugal and lives within his means. I was content with that. I paid 2/3 of the household expenses and he paid 1/3, for years. We grocery shop separately because we have very different diets. Each of us cooks for ourselves, does our own laundry. I do a lot of the "common cleaning" like sweeping, dishes, etc. But he generates less daily work for me than my pet cat does.

He did inherit some wealth not long ago, but neither of us had any idea that would happen. He knew his Dad was doing OK financially but elder care can eat up a nest egg fast, and we had no idea how much his father would need before the end. It very well could have depleted his savings, but it didn't. So I definitely did not choose him with this as a factor.

But kids aren't a thing in our marriage. He never had any and did not want any. I had two teen sons from my first marriage to finish raising. I made it clear that I didn't expect him to take a step parent role, nor to financially support my kids. They are for me to deal with, not him.

The right man is someone like your father, unfortunately all these men today are just man child. With broken families usually a man has 2 divorced parents who wants to make sure that he gets to be with a woman enjoy all the benefits including shared expenses and NOT have to marry the woman. Then as she gets too old and they don't have a child. The man feels he finally matured and wants to start a family, he bails leaving the woman around 35-38 years old and the woman with the broken heart is scrambling to find a replacement man and no men from 25-40 will automatically wants to marry a woman this late and even with a great job she will end up settling for some junior analyst or Graduate Student still working on his doctorate. The dating pool is getting larger these days, every bumble profile features women in her late 30s looking to settle down finally and 50/50 wants a kid. I guess egg prices are dropping.

What, a cheating alcoholic? I don't f'ing think so. I've never been attracted to men who remind me of my father. Even my problematic first husband was nothing like my father. My current husband is my father's AGE, but that's it. He is otherwise nothing like him. I don't even know why you would say that. Most women who have issues with men, do not have good fathers.

And my parents were divorced when I was 10, so boy are you making a pile of assumptions with that comment. I'm Gen X, not a Boomer. Tons of younger Gen X like me had divorced parents.

You keep acting like all men want to have kids. Lots of men do not want kids. It is easy to find a man who doesn't want kids. When I was dating at 36, I was NOT looking to "settle down"...quite the opposite. I was looking for low-commitment good times with fun people. And I got my tubes tied right at the outset of dating, because I was DONE. And I had some wonderful relationships with some awesome people. Some of them are still close friends. The most compatible one, I'm married to now.

This is playing roulette here, once you are running low on chips your only bet left is to go all in on one shot. That's what I'm seeing in the dating pool.

This is why as a man over 45 and accomplished, my dating pool is growing. I would never imagine seeing 25-29 yr olds in the mix and I though I had to settle for women in the high 30s but instead I'm getting tons of women in their late 20s and early 30s looking for a traditional man with traditional values to be with.

How, in all seriousness, is it working out for you? Are you meeting women that you like? Do they like you? Yes, of course you will be able to get dates with women in their 20s - tons of women (myself included) LIKE older men - at least to a point. Though if you're smart, you'll be careful because a lot of younger women "looking for a traditional man with traditional values" are in fact looking for a meal ticket. I'm not saying that like...talking about women being gold diggers or greedy, it's just that people are people and users are out there. And young people are often struggling to get established, so if you are happy to take on some no-career, pretty, young, fertile, "traditional" gal...well, good luck with that.

Personally, I would see that as playing a certain kind of roulette, but it's your business.

As long as there are many ignorant feminists willing to play this game because they haven't figured it out yet they will always lose to the house.

I dunno man, my career has been the biggest WIN in my life. And my attempt to live the "good wife/mother" life will always be my greatest regret, it's been a very costly mistake thus far.

But the fact is, if a person wants freedom they also have to accept responsibility. Those two things come bundled together. Feminism wanted to give women choices. So...we've got more choices now. And yeah, that does come with more freedom to succeed OR to fail. Just perhaps in ways that now we can't simply blame someone else for, we have to own that we did in fact have a choice.

But I am not such a pathetic little lamb that I crave having anyone else tell me how to live my life. I will always prefer freedom and choices, whether that leads me to good outcomes or bad ones. And with the exception of the stress from my young adult sons...everything else in my life is pretty great, especially the choices I started making when I divorced my first husband.

I'm not angry about feminism, I find such a huge irony watching it play itself out. And like I said, nature intended for us to be who we were meant to be. Whether a woman would rather be childless or alone without a man. It doesn't matter, nature will balance itself out.

Whomever declares "I don't need a man, I don't want children." Think about how you arrive at this declaration and retrace. What a price you've paid and bargained for.

LOL I do not even know what this means. Again, the child free women that I know are not alone, not lonely, and not sad about it. They do not feel that they've sacrificed anything that they wanted. They are happy in their careers, their volunteer work, their travel, their relationships. But then...I don't tend to hang around with miserable people who wallow in grievance, with the exception of trying to keep it civil with my ex husband since we both still help our youngest.

I do not believe that any given woman in this society is obligated to reproduce in order to serve the species or the race or the culture or anything else. Not unless society is prepared to give us a hell of a lot more in return for doing so.

Do you also argue that black Americans were better off under slavery, that all this freedom is the source of struggles they have with impoverished communities, drugs and gang violence in the cities and so on?

Because seriously speaking in a general sense about feminism this way... like life would be so much better for women if we had no ability to vote or get educated or have a bank account and were subjugated to the men in our lives, property to pass from father to husband... It's kinda the flavor of the statements you're making. Some used to argue that the other was related to "nature" as well. Still a pretty sick mindset.

[bjh]

Bottom line is women have human rights morally and should have them legally too. Anyone doesn't like that? Get over it, including me, cheerful sexist here. But yeah, it's ridiculous to discuss. Like, should children not be beaten? Should people of certain ethnicities not be enslaved? No Irish need apply? It ain't your great great granddaddy's world and it shouldn't be. Case closed.

[amil23]

I agree. The feminist movement went too far too fast. The thing about evolution is that it is well,... evolution. At its outset, feminism was fashioned as a rebellion against the status quo. The status quo being a generation who had raised families during a worldwide depression and then a generation who had turned to welding together tanks, building air-frames and carrying the load at home while the men went to die, and who, once that was over were mostly glad and thankful to go back to being in a traditional role.
Certainly, I'm not saying all the changes that have taken place are bad, just that you don't make a fork in the evolutionary road with a metaphorical atom bomb.
As uncomfortable as it is to ponder on, women have one role in the furtherance of our species and men have another and societies up until recently have done their best overall to recognize and accommodate these roles. When one realizes each deviation from your planned path is a form of change that should be measured and deliberate, the feminist movement in the U.S. was an anarchic answer to an as-of-that-time un-posed question and caused unrealistic expectations and conflict between sexes for really a very low benefit to those from either camp who chose to go overboard, they having been ruled by their passions. Luckily, we all, with a little humor and tolerance, have mostly healed up and moved on. In fact, it is kind of surprising to me the anger that accompanies discussions around the "battle of the sexes" at all. Almost as if it is meant to destroy the beauty of the male-female relationship.

[rodentraiser]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

I don't understand the point of posting an article from FOX news on feminism. It's such obvious alarmism and "fake news", there's no need to discuss it. "...specifically designed to delete men and babies from life's equation"?? Please. You know better than this nonsense, OP.

I had seen this article in several forms before (the young woman complaining feminism had failed her) and as I said before, I deliberately chose the one from Fox news that I know has a definite slant to the right.

Had I chosen one with a definite slant to the left, the whole premise would be something to the effect that the young woman was too young to know how feminism helped her or an article supporting feminism.

An article with a slant to the left wouldn't really have brought out any discussion. Who wants to discuss something they obviously agree with? But an article with a slant to the right sort of highlights what people who don't support feminism believe in, allows them to identify with it, and lets them post their opinions, too.