I Can Barely Keep Track of All My Wars

[Content Note: Misogyny; gender essentialism; heterocentrism.]

It's tough being a feminist warrior these days. There are so many wars to fight to juggle all at once! There's the War on Christmas, on which I'm already SO BEHIND this year—I will probably leave all my warring until Christmas Eve again!—the War on Families, the War on Marriage, the War on Christians, the War on Tradition, and, of course, the War on Men.

At least, even with all that going on—I Don't Know How She Does It!—I haven't dropped the balls on the War on Men. (Multitasking! Amirite, ladies?) The War on Men has, in fact, been so successful, that Fox News contributor and feminist concern troll Suzanne Venker is sounding the alarm that marriageable women are doomed if the world is not rescued from the evil clutches of man-hating feminists!

The battle of the sexes is alive and well.

Ha ha that's the actual first line of this actual article that was actually published. PERFECT.

Venker then goes on to quote some stats (SCIENCE!) about how women want to get married and men don't. Actually, she cites stats indicating that 8% more women than men "ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives," which doesn't at all axiomatically translate into "women want to get married and men don't," but that is the entire premise of her garbage article, so don't look at the numbers behind that curtain or whatever!

Believe it or not, modern women want to get married. Trouble is, men don't.

Ha ha I DON'T believe it! Not at all!

As the author of three books on the American family and its intersection with pop culture, I've spent thirteen years examining social agendas as they pertain to sex, parenting, and gender roles. During this time, I've spoken with hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women. And in doing so, I've accidentally stumbled upon a subculture of men who've told me, in no uncertain terms, that they're never getting married. When I ask them why, the answer is always the same.

Women aren't women anymore.

First of all, I'm sure those books are great. They SOUND great. So they're probably great. Secondly, as someone who has authored zero books on the American family and its intersection with pop culture, but has definitely talked to some number of humans in my life, maybe dozens or possibly millions, I have also accidentally stumbled upon a subculture of men who don't want to get married. And WOMEN who don't want to get married! I call them—wait for it!—People Who Don't Want to Get Married for a Variety of Reasons. Because I'm a fucking genius.

Among those people are definitely men who say things like, "I'm never getting married because women aren't women anymore," or, sometimes, "I'm never getting married to an American woman when I can buy a woman from another country where I imagine women enjoy being treated like second-class pieces of trash or, as I call it, being treated LIKE A LADY."

But those are men who are terrible, and should be given a stern lecture about not being dehumanizing misogynist fuckheads, instead of elevated as paragons of masculine virtue whose anachronistic belligerent patriarchalism is alleged evidence of feminism's failure.

Anyway, blah blah. More tiresome crapola about how feminism is the worst and the patriarchy is SO COOL, with the usual gender essentialist and heterocentrist claptrap. And then Venker presents her closing argument.

Fortunately, there is good news: women have the power to turn everything around. All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.

If they do, marriageable men will come out of the woodwork.

CASE CLOSED, YOUR HONOR!

The most amazing thing about this article being published in the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and twelve is that these are not even new ideas. Ever since a woman got an idea in her head that maybe she deserved to be treated like a full rights-bearing human being, there has been public hand-writing about how men are petulantly checking the fuck out in response.


See?
And yet somehow humans continue to get married. Indeed, in many parts of the world, the institution of marriage is being opened up to people to whom it has previously been denied, in no small part because of men who want to get married very much. To each other.

There has always been a certain percentage of retrofuck straight men who grump and harrumph about straight women who want marriages that are not defined exclusively on men's terms. But the majority of men in the US have gotten over not getting a fucking dowry with their blushing brides, and I'm sure the majority of men will get over women who want possession of their full humanity, even inside a marriage, too.

That is something of which I believe men to be capable, because I am a feminist and thus believe men to be capable of change.

Unlike the defenders of Patriarchy, who are the most intractable man-haters on the planet.

[H/T to everyone in the multiverse, and thanks to each and every one of you.]