What can be done about the falling marriage rate and drop in childbirths?
First, one conservative suggests dropping the “conservative” label altogether, since “branding oneself in this way is a womanly stance … that accomplishes nothing real, while seeking abstract validation.” In fact, right-wing men should refrain from talking about politics with women at all and instead aim to “be builders. Build your body, your home, your garden, new networks, and business.” (oh, dear! Ed)
If men build a world with “high standards and natural hierarchies,” women will “follow” because they are “socially submissive creatures” (sic) and many of them long “to submit to a mission against the modern world.” (Oh, dear again! Ed) That’s because the modern world makes them miserable, and so women are eager (often without realizing it) to fall in behind men who “strike out on their own from the system that rewards women for dominating them.”
If anything, the second American Mind essay (presumably authored by a woman, writing under the pseudonym Peachy Keenan) displays even greater contempt for the attitudes and outlook of young women in America today. Taking its cue from poll data showing 1-in-6 young adult (18-23) Generation Z women identifying as LGBTQ, with 72 percent of those claiming to be bisexual, the essay claims that calling oneself bi gives now gives one “extra social points” and “elevated social status as a protected class.”
Some blame the trend on “the tragic feminization of men” that has led them to “forget what it actually means to be a man” and has therefore driven women to flee into the arms of other women. As for solutions to this problem, the author offers little beyond a call to “build off-ramps from this chaos, and a pathway back to healthy heterosexuality for children assigned straight at birth.” She also offers a warning that a failure to do so will make “Generation Z girls the most medicated, dysfunctional, childless, self-sterilized generation ever.”
It’s unclear how widespread such atavistic views about men and women are on the American right. Fears of emasculation under modern conditions have a long history in this country, and among American conservatives in particular. Recent trends appear to have tapped into and reactivated that tendency.
In the last few years conservatives have proposed a pseudo-philosophical justification, teaching young conservative men that they will find girlfriends and wives by thinking and acting as if they are owed female adoration. This is exceedingly unlikely to work. The same goes for teaching men that women who fail to respond warmly to displays of preening self-regard are mentally defective. None of it will help these young conservatives to become less lonely, less sexually frustrated, or emotionally unfulfilled.
On the contrary, encouraging misogyny in American men is liable to make their loneliness, frustration, unfulfillment — and anger — far worse. We should all understand by now how dangerous that can be — and that it’s unlikely to end well for anyone concerned. (Damon Linker, The Week 3/19/21
My comment: I am so glad I’m old! Whatever happened to old-fashioned woo-ing, good manners, behaving thoughtfully and considerately, being charming, making them laugh, treating women as equals – in other words, the foolproof, ancient strategies going back millennia? These guys haven’t a clue.