Women as victims – of damaging boys and men

“Broke men are hurting american womens marriage prospects”

The New York Post did women and dating no favors with this series, especially given that this came out shortly before the pandemic and played perfectly into a narrative that was already well underway among men. A narrative that pandemic coverage itself reinforced fabulously. It is incredibly dangerous that the entire series has been written by women, and framed for and directed at women. This especially given that men will have likely its most important audience. Men of course are going to read this from their own perspectives, and many in a context where they heard a lot of feminism’s women as the exclusive victims. They will note the concern or lack thereof, for them, in a series that discusses the harm to women of damaging boys and men.

Order matters.

The last in the series of articles, should have been the first. It should have been the context within which the others were read.

https://nypost.com/2019/09/27/why-is-a-good-man-so-hard-to-find-blame-the-war-on-boys-and-men

It is more than unfortunate that the order made the above last and the below first

https://nypost.com/2019/09/06/broke-men-are-hurting-american-womens-marriage-prospects

Women should consider what that first article actually says and the implications of the headline. The implications of women having to “date down” and how making this a hardship for them speaks to how they will be understood to view men and marriage, even where men have been shamed about not being romantic enough, and how romance seems defined by what they do or buy for her. The assertion of what a man is supposed to bring to a marriage, and what questions that triggers with regards to what a woman is supposed to bring. When they weigh that against what they have been screamed at about, and how women are the victims of the wage gap, and now women are the victims of men earning less as well?

Consider how this article paints women as the victims of men having less education, and men being pushed into the gig economy, without discussing the causes of this, where the younger male audience will be dangerously aware. Leaving that for weeks later, sets a frame, not just for women, but for men.

Context does as well

This article fell within that series of articles examining the shortage of economically attractive men.

https://nypost.com/2019/09/15/dont-ditch-a-potential-husband-over-his-income

A word of advice to women, with regards to understanding how hard it would be to trade up, and the need to work with the man you have. However it is again important to examine the piece, when read by a man. I would leap first to the “advantages of marriage for men” and read that from the perspective of benefits accruing to him from those asserted benefits.

If he is working harder, and longer and spending less time with friends and more time with family after marriage is that really an advantage? If that was his preference, would he not be doing that prior to marriage? Also, men are dangerously aware of what is said of men after divorce and how social isolation becomes a huge problem for many. We have blamed men’s nature for this, but if this is attached to marriage? Is that not the natural result of working more and seeing his own friends radically less? Would that not mean that one of the things that men suffer from in divorce, and that has been asserted a burden on women in marriage, that is sustaining a social space, is actually something that marriage, hence her, imposed on him? Would that not infer that she replaces his social network with her own on him while married?

Also if he does not prefer all those hours at work, why is he doing it after he is married? Is not the earning more money and working more hours the result of requiring more money? Why does he need more money after marriage if he has a partner? Would that not infer marriage either causes him to want a radically higher lifestyle, or she is responsible for a greater increase in the household expenses than her income brings?

He is likely aware of the message of women being the consumer power (can’t miss the feminist message around this) he will know women spend the majority of the household income. What conclusion do we expect young single men to arrive at? Especially since they have likely seen mom driving the household spending and decor growing up. He has likely seen the memes regarding men and their minimalist lifestyles, and noted that men’s rooms seem less filled with artsy possessions most of the time.

Message to men – and bad timing

So what message did men get? How can they get past the multiple ones here? These are especially damaging in that so many feed the same narratives men were already getting from the group of men saying they would be better off single, and that women do not really care.

How does the message that women want to marry a man financially more successful than them fit with him being shamed about objectifying women, and how he should love her for who she is? The assertion that without money he brings little to marriage, and she is the victim of the reality that he is less successful, says what about marriage and women to him? The reality of starting with the last article, would have put this in a very different context. Consider starting instead with the context of – look what we did to men and boys, followed by now look how it has hurt us. Instead we get, look at how we are hurt, poor us, we are the victims of having damaged boys education and affirmative action pushing men into the gig economy. Reality is, by the time “war on men” is raised women have already been defined as the victims of choosing to damage boys, where the damage was largely done by women influenced by feminism.

This is a particular problem because it came very shortly before the pandemic lock downs. It was followed with long series of articles of how women were the primary victims in the pandemic, even as more men were dying. Men noted that if it was men getting all that overtime, odds are that it would have been how they were advantaged by the pandemic. They noted how the frontline workers getting credit, where not the ones dying at the highest rates, the men who were required to do jobs that had to continue were dying at a faster rate, but how it hurt women seemed the only topic of discussion permitted. It fed the narrative that women do not see men as people or partners but wallets or ATMS extremely well.

The messages timing and dating – the perfect storm.

A lot of people noted how it was like dating collapsed post pandemic. Initially most seemed to attribute this to loss of social skills, increase in shyness etc. and surely all of those would be factors. However, few considered the possibility until the PEW research bit came out, that the number of men wanting to date or seek relationships had collapsed.

We need to ask, why the explosion not just of single men, but men who did not want relationships? Was it the sudden acceptance of narratives that suggested to men they were better avoiding relationships? If so what gave those narratives around why men should stay clear such sudden weight? Would that not also explain the sudden complaints around “situationships”?

While these pieces do not alone create that, they are typical of a good deal of the discussion for years leading up to this bit of research. Men had been hearing how it was women who were hurt by the shortage of “marriageable men”, i.e. men with post secondary education previously, where they were also being made aware of the research that had been done for years on the issues for boys education. Somehow the clear damage to boys education never seemed to get traction, but women being hurt by a lack of educated men was. This seems a clear message to men, about what is cared about, and it is not them.

These all fit perfectly with what young men were already hearing in terms of women as the only victims that counted, fit perfectly with a meme about what Hillary Clinton had said that had already gained currency a couple of years previously, where she had said “Women have always been the primary victims of war. They lose their husbands, their fathers, and their sons in combat”. They became conscious of how that speech, did a great deal to launch her political career.

It was a dangerous number of men were also aware how men who questioned after she gave the speech in the 1990s that wording were attacked as misogynist and told they were monsters for asserting women did not suffer from this, where the specific criticism had been “THE primary victims” as opposed to among the primary, or just victims. The reality being clear… he does not count in his own death, nor does he feel the pain of loss, only women. Men were starting to notice how it had been asserted to be misogyny for men to not support Hillary, as opposed to her seeming contempt for men.

Men had already noticed and started discussing the previous reality of bring back our girls. Where the kidnapping of 280 girls was a crisis, but that this had happened repeatedly with boys seemed a non concern. It was clear that more than twice that number of boys had been burned alive in their schools in a couple of incidences in the previous couple of months and over 40 times that number kidnapped, and that merited little discussion in the west, but suddenly this was misogyny, even though to that point nearly all those kidnapped and killed had been men.

Unfortunately for women, just as we were exiting the period of pandemic restrictions, Russia invaded Ukraine and men quickly picked up on two things, all the discussion was about the refuges and how horrid it was for them, and that men had been required to stay to be available to fight and day. The latter while noted got radically less coverage. This brought attention to this as a broad pattern, where some men started examining crisis after crisis, and how when nearly exclusively men died, gender was not mentioned, but women dying was potent.

The impression left, was the media seemed to believe, men care when men or women die, women well, care when women die, and care only about the deaths of men in so far as it hurts women. The message to men from the media, politicians, feminism and the permitted discussions, women care about harms to women, but not men. Hence why the harm to the education of boys and opportunity for men, would have women as the primary victims. A narrative these Articles from the New York Post fit perfectly. It is, for men already in doubt, these are the perfect capstone, especially when followed by the coverage of the pandemic and Ukraine.

Generational issue

We need to ask, does the media reflect young women? Are they, or their mothers the target audience? Should young men presume that young women see themselves as the primary victims of the choice to remove boys role models, alienate fathers, arrest abused men, damage boys education? I doubt very highly that would be fair, and I do not believe that young women are so present in the men’s issues groups because they feel that way.

However, I do think young women have a massive problem with how they are perceived. While they have been walking away from feminism, or rather most have never belonged, the perception is not translating to being seen to care. The presence of women in the MRA movement, or how many are disgusted by the lies in domestic violence or the lack of care for their male peers, is not being communicated in a way broad enough to build trust. The women who are seen, are seen as exceptions, the unicorns. There are simply too many slightly older women who have pushed the narrative of women as the primary victims, and even as feminism is seen to have hurt boys, defined women even as the primary victims of feminism, for the good of young women.

Here fact may be less important than perception. It may be that women are indeed deeply harmed by feminism, however we need to ask the source of that harm. Is not most of that harm the result of alienating men and damaging their ability to act as the traditional partners women now seem to want? Yes women may want to stay home with children, not being able to may amount to a larger harm to her life satisfaction, than damaging his education and opportunity did to his … but that there could be no concern for the harm to him first, is what is so damaging. It is that what he would want does not seem to have even entered the equation.

The narrative of women as the primary victims of feminism feeds the most damaging of echo narratives among men driven by feminism – that is women only care about women. Even if women end up by being the largest victims of feminism, they are the collateral damage of an attack on boys and men, and starting with the accidental damage not direct target sends a message. What is the message of not focusing primarily, at least initially on the harm to boys education, men’s careers, and the reality of the other sources of alienation?

We have equally largely ignored the harm to fathers from parental alienation. While the harm to children may be more important, the his choices will likely be driven by this even more than the harms of fatherlessness. The harms to the man, is a required focus for women seeking to limit the harm of feminism to women. Yes children are important and need their fathers, and however that is what fathers and others have already been focused on. The question now floating around the heads of men not given full voice, even in their own minds but the crucial one, is likely is his humanity even seen. The reality that we have been leaping past the mass of suicides among fathers created by family law, is answering this question with a very loud no. It needs to be understood and said, that most men absent were removed, not abandoned their children, and the courts and lawyers have directly encouraged women to do this, by using the lie around domestic violence as a weapon in court.

Leading with women as victims of feminism is a choice to destroy trust in women.

Expecting men to lead and be the loudest voices in the reframing, and correction from feminism is equally dangerous. There is a reason that women have been pushed to the fore in the MRA community, and a hazard with pushing men to lead with regards to fixing boys education and men’s opportunity. The reason is the hazard that is created when it is only men seen to be concerned with the wellbeing of men, even if most women quietly support them. This furthers the prime harm of feminism for women, the powerful impression it created that women are consumed with the wellbeing of women only. Exactly the opposite of what is required to restore trust.