Do Not Marry, Do Not Have Children
Marriage is a foundation of civilized life. No advanced civilization has ever existed without the married, two-parent family. Those who argue that our civilization needs healthy marriages to survive are not exaggerating.
And yet I cannot, in good conscience, urge young men to marry today. For many men (and some women), marriage has become nothing less than a one-way ticket to jail. Even the New York Times has reported on how easily “the divorce court leads to a jail cell,” mostly for men. In fact, if I have one urgent piece of practical advice for young men today it is this: Do not marry and do not have children.
Spreading this message may also, in the long run, be the most effective method of saving marriage as an institution. For until we understand that the principal threat to marriage today is not cultural but political, and that it comes not from homosexuals but from heterosexuals, we will never reverse the decline of marriage. The main destroyer of marriage, it should be obvious, is divorce. Michael McManus of Marriage Savers points out that “divorce is a far more grievous blow to marriage than today’s challenge by gays.” The central problem is the divorce laws.
It is well known that half of all marriages end in divorce. But widespread misconceptions lead many to believe it cannot happen to them. Many conscientious people think they will never be divorced because they do not believe in it. In fact, it is likely to happen to you whether you wish it or not.
First, you do not have to agree to the divorce or commit any legal transgression. Under “no-fault” divorce laws, your spouse can divorce you unilaterally without giving any reasons. The judge will then grant the divorce automatically without any questions.
But further, not only does your spouse incur no penalty for breaking faith; she can actually profit enormously. Simply by filing for divorce, your spouse can take everything you have, also without giving any reasons. First, she will almost certainly get automatic and sole custody of your children and exclude you from them, without having to show that you have done anything wrong. Then any unauthorized contact with your children is a crime. Yes, for seeing your own children you will be subject to arrest.
There is no burden of proof on the court to justify why they are seizing control of your children and allowing your spouse to forcibly keep you from them. The burden of proof (and the financial burden) is on you to show why you should be allowed to see your children.
The divorce industry thus makes it very attractive for your spouse to divorce you and take your children. (All this earns money for lawyers whose bar associations control the careers of judges.) While property divisions and spousal support certainly favor women, the largest windfall comes through the children. With custody, she can then demand “child support” that may amount to half, two-thirds, or more of your income. (The amount is set by committees consisting of feminists, lawyers, and enforcement agents – all of whom have a vested interest in setting the payments as high as possible.) She may spend it however she wishes. You pay the taxes on it, but she gets the tax deduction.
You could easily be left with monthly income of a few hundreds dollars and be forced to move in with relatives or sleep in your car. Once you have sold everything you own, borrowed from relatives, and maximized your credit cards, they then call you a “deadbeat dad” and take you away in handcuffs. You are told you have “abandoned” your children and incarcerated without trial.
Evidence indicates that, as men discover all this, they have already begun an impromptu marriage “strike”: refusing to marry or start families, knowing they can be criminalized if their wife files for divorce. “Have anti-father family court policies led to a men’s marriage strike?” ask Glenn Sacks and Dianna Thompson in the Philadelphia Enquirer. In Britain, fathers tour university campuses warning young men not to start families. In his book, From Courtship to Courtroom, Attorney Jed Abraham concludes that the only protection for men to avoid losing their children and everything else is not to start families in the first place.
Is it wise to disseminate such advice? If people stop marrying, what will become of the family and our civilization?
Marriage is already all but dead, legally speaking, and divorce is the principal reason. The fall in the Western birth rate is directly connected with divorce law.
It is also likely that same-sex marriage is being demanded only because of how heterosexuals have already debased marriage through divorce law. “The world of no-strings heterosexual hookups and 50% divorce rates preceded gay marriage,” advocate Andrew Sullivan points out. “All homosexuals are saying…is that, under the current definition, there’s no reason to exclude us. If you want to return straight marriage to the 1950s, go ahead. But until you do, the exclusion of gays is simply an anomaly – and a denial of basic civil equality.”
We will not restore marriage by burying our heads in the sand; nor simply by preaching to young people to marry, as the Bush administration’s government therapy programs now do. The way to restore marriage as an institution in which young people can place their trust, their children, and their lives is to make it an enforceable contract. We urgently need a national debate about divorce, child custody, and the terms under which the government can forcibly sunder the bonds between parents and their children. We owe it to future generations, if there are to be any.
Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D., is assistant professor of government at Patrick Henry College and President of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. His book, Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family, has just been published by Cumberland House Publishing.
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March 17th, 2009 at 5:19 am
[...] And yet I cannot, in good conscience, urge young men to marry today. For many men (and some women), marriage has become nothing less than a one-way ticket to jail. Even the New York Times has reported on how easily “the divorce court leads to a jail cell,” mostly for men. In fact, if I have one urgent piece of practical advice for young men today it is this: Do not marry and do not have children….(Full Story) [...]
February 22nd, 2009 at 8:38 am
[...] a comment » Advice to young men: Do not marry, do not have children By Stephen [...]
December 8th, 2007 at 1:16 am
I have a theory as to what happened to the Neanderthals.
The Neanderthal women adopted the feminazi mystique. Why not? They were almost as strong as their men, which is considerably stronger than the average Cro-Magnon who is not a football player.
Because their lawyers liked to make money without the bother of actually proving or disproving wrongdoing (risky business that) they enacted “no-fault” divorce legislation. This made it easy to asset strip the men and force them into peonage to pay the alimony and child support.
The Neanderthal men said, “Fark it! I won’t fark ‘em!”
No more Neanderthal children. No more Neanderthals.
A society the punishes parenthood disappears.
December 6th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
I had to deal with a few serious issues that prevented me until now from reading Stephen Baskerville’s article and all of the comments that were made.
I agree with all of what Stephen Baskerville identified in his article and in his subsequent comment (#76). I also agree with those comments that were made that indicate that the “marriage strike” is a very serious calamity. However, it seems to me that hardly any of the commenters realize how serious that calamity is in the so-called “free West”.
The West and all developed nations, Japan, China and India included, have begun an irreversible course of self-destruction that will end in all of the developed nations being depopulated.
Nature abhors a vacuum. That is also true of a demographic vacuum. Whether it is through osmosis or through a violent implosion, something will always and unavoidably move in to fill a vacuum, even a demographic one. It is quite clear what it is that will fill the demographic vacuum in the developed nations. It will be nothing other than people from nations that still uphold the existence of the traditional nuclear family and the need for humanity to propagate itself.
The question is for how long the UN-promoted depopulation of the world (down to a billion people or less – perhaps as few as 300 million people in the whole world), and the related UN-promotion of the equalization of population densities throughout the world will progress by relatively peaceful means. It appears doubtful that the relatively peaceful global peace can be maintained much longer, just as it was no longer possible for the Roman Empire to maintain its Pax Romana once the Roman Empire began its collapse for very much the same reasons that are causing the collapse of the developed nations now: greed and corruption, excessive taxation and the deliberate destruction of the means by which the traditional nuclear families could continue to maintain themselves.
The “Barbarian” invasions were triggered by the collapse of the Roman Empire. They were not the cause of that collapse.
The collapse of the Roman Empire was the beginning of the dark age that followed and lasted for a thousand years. We should worry about how long the dark age will last that is beginning now. It is too late to worry about anything that could possibly be done to ward off that dark age.
Civilizations come and go. Ours has had the bun.
–Walter Schneider
December 6th, 2007 at 10:42 am
[...] Do Not Marry, Do Not Have Children [...]
December 6th, 2007 at 8:22 am
[...] Into Custody” on his syndicated radio show. Baskerville recently published an article titled “Do Not Marry, Do Not Have Children”. Despite the universal acceptance of Dr. Baskerville’s analysis on the state of marriage, [...]
December 6th, 2007 at 5:32 am
[...] Custody” on his syndicated radio show. Baskerville recently published an article titled “Do Not Marry, Do Not Have Children”. Despite the universal acceptance of Dr. Baskerville’s analysis on the state of marriage, [...]
December 5th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
“It is widespread misconception that half of all marriages end in divorce. Serial divorcers inflate the rate”
From a guy’s perspective, it doesn’t really matter since there are zero benefits to marriage that are not already available to them without incurring the legal, financial, and social risks inherent to men in marriage today.
And whether or not you are correct, it’s men who bear the burden of the risk.
December 5th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
It is widespread misconception that half of all marriages end in divorce. Serial divorcers inflate the rate
December 4th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Instead of hoping for a debate that has the potential to accomplish absolutely nothing, maybe ACFC and Baskerville need to think about moving their operations to Wyoming or North Dakota.
These States are sparsely populated and provide the “movement” with the opportunity to organize in a place were a relatively small number of eligible voters can influence the outcome of elections.
Baskerville and ACFC could encourage people to relocate to one of these States for that purpose. I would make the move in a heartbeat. If people aren’t willing to make these kinds of sacrifices, then get use to the idea of “more oppression”.
I think … Senator or Governor Baskerville … has a very nice ring to it. This is entirely possible. North Dakota already has a large percentage of the population in favor of shared parenting as we saw in 2006.
December 4th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Question: I see many conservatives, such as Michael Medved, promoting marriage as the solution to our national problems. What is your take on these conservatives? Have you done any outreach to them?
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:56 pm
I’m not walking away from anything. I’m just saying there’s no reason to believe that a debate will change anything, and that a premature debate may even do more harm than good.
There’s a lot at stake for the people who rely on this industry for their livelihood and to think they will change their ways just because we are right is foolhardy. There is also a great deal at stake for every State in this country that relies so heavily on the revenue created by this industry.
I don’t think most of you people have any idea what we’re up against. This is institutionalized slavery and will not be corrected by a good old fashioned debate.
People need to stop going along with the program. When the day comes that your freedom, your children and the future of our country are more important than your own skin, then we will be making progress. Until then it’s all talk, and talk ain’t going to change a dad-gum thing.
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:46 pm
You’re right, merck, the only thing to do is walk away. We’ve all had the opportunity to discover that no one is interested in a debate about these things.
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:08 am
So the answer to this problem is the declaration that we need a national debate? What makes us think we will have a fair shot at the podium or that anyone other than father’s rights people will be interested in our message?
Why should we think that the public is ready to hear this message? Isn’t it possible that society isn’t ready for the message we have to offer and a “debate” would be premature and unsuccessful?
It’s a fact that State and local governments rely heavily on the revenue generated by the “child support” industry to balance their books. The States are absolutely convinced they need this money to survive.
We are also talking about taking away the livelihood of millions of people. Unnecessary judges, lawyers, caseworkers, psychologists and all the rest will be out of a job. That translates into millions of mortgages, car loans and all the rest that accompanies these high paying professional jobs. We’re talking about a huge economic impact.
The simple fact of the matter is that it’s going to take a lot more than a national debate to rectify a situation that is so far “out of control”. There will never be sweeping changes gained by means of “reform”.
These people love to hear the word “reform”, because it means more of the same, under a new name, with a slightly different twist.
People should get use to the idea, that we are in for decades more of this oppression, with the possibility that it will only get worse.
Who was it that said, “Desperate times call for desperate measures”.
• mass incarcerations without trial or charge
• forced confessions
• children forcibly separated from parents who are under no suspicion of legal wrongdoing and parents stripped of the care, custody, and companionship of their children without explanation
• government agents entering the homes, demanding and examining private papers and personal effects, and seizing the property of citizens who are under no suspicion of legal wrongdoing
• official court records, including hearing tapes and transcripts, doctored and falsified with the knowledge of court officials and evidence fabricated against the innocent
• defendants denied the constitutional right to face their accusers
• bureaucratic police authorized to issue subpoenas and arrest warrants against parents, with no hearing and contrary to due process of law
• special courts created specifically to process parents for political offenses
• forced labor facilities created specifically for parents
• children instructed to hate their parents with the backing of government officials
• children forced by government officials to act as informers against their parents
• children abused and killed with the backing of government officials
• knowingly false allegations, for which no evidence is presented, accepted as fact without proof, overturning the presumption of innocence, and not punished when demonstrated to be untrue
• parents ordered by government officials to separate from their spouses, on pain of losing their children
• parents forced to pay the private fees of court officials they have not hired and whose services they have not sought or used, on pain of incarceration
• parents suspected of no legal wrongdoing punitively stripped of their property and income, sometimes at gunpoint, and reduced to penury
• government officials using the mass media to vilify private American citizens, and political leaders using their offices as platforms to verbally attack private American citizens, who have no right of reply or opportunity to defend themselves
• parents jailed without trial reportedly beaten, in at least one case fatally, and denied medical attention while in police custody.
Stephan Baskerville
March, 2007
December 1st, 2007 at 3:43 pm
BTW:
Don’t mean to babble on, but there’s also the fact that that America’s feminazi princesses just can’t do without the Nanny State and its financial and legislative support.
The only way things will REALLY change is when women start to suffer the same abuses as men. Remember, women are earning more than their male counterparts in America’s major cities. When they start having THEIR fortunes pillaged; when THEY start having to pay ridiculous sums in alimony; when and if THEY start to lose sole custody of their children – things will change. There’ll be a massive uproar, believe me. When WOMEN start to lose, we’ll all hear about it.
Today’s women say that it’s unromantic for men to want prenuptial agreements. Tomorrow’s women will tell men that it’s unromantic for them NOT to want premuptial agreements. I can just hear the doublestandards brewing!
The marriage crisis is the premiere stage for today’s gender war against men. It’s the misandrist battle royale. That’s the real problem. Once feminists are done with men altogether, they’ll cast us aside, have children through artificial insemination, and have the state pay their daycare costs while they go off to their ‘careers.’
December 1st, 2007 at 11:02 am
In today’s judicial hellhole we call America, there is slight chance that marriage laws will ever change. The American Bar Associtation and the ATLA wield far too much influence to let that happen. Why do you think lawyers donate so much money to politicians who fight tort reform?
And let’s see, a huge percentage of elected officials are . . . trained lawyers! Do the math.
The only way that things COULD change is if states got out of the marriage game alltogether and marriage became a private contract between two parties than could only be argued and enforced in a civil court. In this way a marriage contract could be as enforceable as any business contract. Most judges are loathe to mess around with well written business contracts, as opposed to family court judges, who are all too ready to ignore precedent, evidence and common sense as they go along. A civil court judge would not be long in his job if he were identified as a wing-nut by the legal community. Remember, judges keep their jobs because of lawyers.
Make marriage solely a private contract between two parties, and the lawyers still stand to make money through contingency fees. They can still have the loser pay their bills as well, although that happens somewhat less in civil court. Either way, the whole thing hinges on making sure the legal shysters can continue to hit paydirt. But the big drawback with this plan is that lawyers will start convincing middle class women to sue their spouses for 20 million dollars.
Plus, if you took the state out of marriage, what would happen to all of the Nanny State jobs that are connected to the family courts? Where would all the half-assed social workers and child support payment beaurocrats go? Believe me, the state has a vested interest in making sure that marriage laws stay right where they are.
Will there ever be a cure? Who knows. But we have to try something.
November 29th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Man I apologize for reading this so late but Dr. Baskerville, just an outstanding piece. Truly well done, honestly.
November 28th, 2007 at 11:58 am
The poor state of marriage (read: divorce) is the white elephant in the room. Though America has one of the highest divorce rates in the world, leadership is afraid to address the problem as it will rock the feminist boat.
Life is short, and I desire to raise a family. I have begun steps to secure citizenship in another country. Why work for decades to have no family to share the fruits of labor. Or worse have the fruits taken away for little or no reason, against your will to be given by to the enemy.
America is no place to be a father. The risk is too high.
I am not surprised the boys are lost – preferring drugs, sex, alcohol, violence to mast the pain for growing up in a dysfunctional feminist family.
American family may get worse for children when the parents are the same sex.
November 28th, 2007 at 10:14 am
[...] Dr. Stephen Baskerville at MensNewsDaily wrote that “…until we understand that the principal threat to marriage today is not cultural but political, and that it comes not from homosexuals but from heterosexuals, we will never reverse the decline of marriage. The main destroyer of marriage, it should be obvious, is divorce. Michael McManus of Marriage Savers points out that “divorce is a far more grievous blow to marriage than today’s challenge by gays.” The central problem is the divorce laws.” [...]
November 24th, 2007 at 9:29 am
i am 56. been married 2 times. both ex’s have a great lifestyle…nice homes, lots of friends (need that network of other women don’t you know), ability to travel, buy stuff and spend, spend, spend. the house on the lake is gone. well not gone, just gone from me. she has the pontoon, jet skies, neighbors who have the same stuff and all the toys to go with it. so where do you think the kids and grandkids like to hang out? who do you think they believe produced all that “stuff”?
stay single and don’t reproduce! ever.
November 23rd, 2007 at 3:43 pm
All I can say is Wow!!!!
The volume of response to this article is huge.
Similarly, blogs like dont-marry.com are extremely active.
This is obviously becoming an issue with many, many people.
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:37 pm
I heard the other day on FOX News that the number of divorces was down in America. The first thought that entered my mind was, “What about the number of people marrying?”
Personally, I think FOX News (overall) tends to present news in a chivalrous, conservative, right wing manner that unwittingly tends to support many of the gender feminists’ agenda items, and the shoddy coverage of this topic is but one example, IMO. The last I heard, the marriage rate was down in America. It’s too bad a more intelligent look at the whole “downward spiral” in male/female relations wasn’t gone into by FOX news. In all fairness, maybe so many people are un-documentably co-habitating (shacking up) that an honest assessment is not feasible. What ever happened to investigative journalism to find the answers to these questions???
It appears to me our entire news media is in a “downward spiral” as regards objectively, accurately, and honestly reporting “news.” Thank goodness for places like MND where an erudite scholar like Dr. Baskerville can still convey a scholarly message to sincere students of scholarly learning.
We are clearly getting too much pseudo-science from our culturally Marxist indoctrinated educational institutions, entertainment institutions, and news institutions – especially in the area of gender relations and male/female relationships. When gender feminist propaganda, cloaked in the illusion of objective reporting passes for conservative news coverage, you know America is in deep, deep trouble.
Happy Thanksgiving Dr. Baskerville. Thank you for your courage.
November 21st, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Anti armchair general, no reason to fear leaving America.
Take that from someone who has lived as an expatriate for over a decade.
In fact, in some parts of the world outside of America and E.U. nations, men experience MORE freedoms than they do in America.
As for health care, don’t jump to the conclusion that living abroad means inferior health care.
In fact, I have received superior health care in some of the countries that I have lived in that exceeded any expectations that I could have received if I were living in America.
November 21st, 2007 at 3:24 pm
65. fourthwire,
Thanks for somber observations. One poiticans said “I would rather die on my feet, than live on knees”. Yet when it came to feminist issues in state legislature, he puckered up and kissed feminist’s posterior.
But you give some light at the end of the tunnel, even though the thought of leaving America scares me. Several years ago we visited Germany for about a week (with day a trip to Austria) I thought my heart problem was recurring and called the cardiologist back in America. She assured that it is just anxiety and take nitrate until I come back and see her. Then it has been OK.
November 21st, 2007 at 2:53 pm
“How about the loneliness issue as you grow old (unless man gets killed in war). Is the nursing home the only hope we have?”
This issue comes up often among men when they first consider that there’s no good reason to marry in America these days, after one does a truthful and accurate cost-benefit analysis.
First of all, even marrying does not protect men from loneliness. It’s quite possible to be married and lonely, particularly those men held in marriage through threats and weakness, where the man has become little more than an economic slave to his wife.
Just as importantly one must remember that around 50% of marriages end in divorce, including two-thirds of all new marriages.
So, by marrying in America (or other Western nations), a man STILL stands a significant chance of being divorced and faced with the threat of loneliness…. yet be forced to pay, pay, pay to an ex-wife who no longer provides sex, companionship, or any other comfort to her ex-husband.
The key to avoiding loneliness in old age is no longer “marriage”. For modern men, other social structures must be created to replace the companionship and social needs. Friendships with other men are key examples of such social structures.
And believe it or not, since women tend to outlive men anyway, there’s never any shortage of older women to provide companionship for surviving older men.
Of course a man can still turn his back on the country that turned ITS back on him – move overseas to a nation where men are treated well, and with the care and caution that Dave emphasizes, choose a wife….. and remain married in that country with her.
November 20th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Stephen Baskerville,Ph.D
Excellent article and boatoad of comments. But if a male copulates with a female are condoms 100% proof that your are not the father? Maybe she got pregnant by someone else. What about us poor wretches who already are married? DNA tests may or may not be exculpatory.
How about the loneliness issue as you grow old (unles man gets killed in war). Is the nursing home the only hope we have?
November 19th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
It won’t be much better under Republicans. They are shying away from all social issues in droves. None of the leading presidential contenders opposes same sex marriage and/or civil unions.
This country is in for a very rough decade. I have a few folks in high places in the Republican party who agree with me. The party is lost chasing the dollar-vote, while voters who don’t live on K-street are left to pick from the lousy merchandise both parties are putting forward.
The fact is, we can’t elect what the Parties refuse to put before us. There are many card tricks that work this way too.
November 19th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Under a Clinton Administration and with a Democratic-controlled Congress, N.O.W. and same-sex marriage will have powerful and accomodating friends. An important point to keep in mind is that American women and the feminists have not really taken over much of anything over the decades. Men have simply relinquished and surrendered their rights. It started with the baby-boomer males and continues today. Boys in single-parent households today no nothing different-it is the norm to them …and normal. They grow to disrespect their father’s who are not around and they grow to resent the mothers who are around. It is the wholesale wreckage of the heterosexual community. Lesbians have always led the way and American women have always followed…..and American men have always stood by silently.
One day America as a nation will finally see that the country is finished. The old may be the only ones who understand that they brought this about by their silence. The young simply will know nothing different.
I on the other hand think America is already finished because most people do not see what is happening today-by the time most people do, it will be too late.
Let the country collapse.
November 19th, 2007 at 12:48 am
One item yet unaddressed about this piece is the quote from Mike McManus suggesting that the impact of same sex marriage is relatively unimportant.
Certainly, divorce and the formalization of illegitimacy as a federally-sponsored activity are dual blows to the institution of marriage. However, if NOW forces same-sex marriage on America, it will greatly hinder if not substantially prevent the recovery of the institution of heterosexual marriage.
The current trend of “hooking up”, living together, and not getting married by young men and women is the predictor that same-sex marriage will become highly attractive to young women, who will marry each other and abort all future possibility of heterosexual marriage.
This situation is in a very fluid state. It is ripe for N.O.W. to achieve its long-awaited end-state, to make marriage predominantly a feminist enterprise. Given the fact that N.O.W. has fully achieved every other goal it set out to accomplish, it would be tremendously unwise to pretend that same-sex marriage is not a major threat to the restoration of heterosexual marriage.
Those who study volcanos know that the eruption is just the first round of damage. It is the pyroclastic mud flows that come when the column collapses that wreaks even more widespread damage. The situation with marriage is quite similar. The eruption is finished, the mud flow of same-sex marriage is on the way….
November 18th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
What is extremely telling here is that at the bottom of this article (at the moment) is an advertisement for Kessler and Schwartz PC, who runs an outfit called http://www.georgiadivorcelawyer.com, with a pretty girl taking a phone call.
Anybody who thinks men have a chance of having a decent married life in America need to see the writing on the wall, and act accordingly.
Trial lawyers running both the Republican and Democratic parties (big law firms close to K-street) are keeping family law reform issues off the presidential and Congressional tickets for good reason — they don’t want the reforms that would necessarily follow were these issues to break out into the larger public political debate.
Some of you might recall Dr. Mark Klein’s attempt at the presidential run. His positions on family law were perfect. He actually won the SRLC poll in Memphis, on write-ins — but the RNC ordered the Tennessee to quash the numbers. I know about this because I was there and watched it all happen.
We all knew that Klein couldn’t win because of his complete lack of political record and his position on the War. I told him this from the beginning, but I don’t think he grasped it. He took the RNC’s actions personally — a big mistake. The purpose of the RNC’s action was not to wipe out Klein — it was to erase the family reform issues he so passionately and eloquently called for.
So, America is faced with a presidential election in which no candidate in either party deserves anything better than a C- grade. None of these people are talking about the core issues driving American decline, our platform of runaway spending, our lack of health care, our pending retirement problems, etc. We know that marriage-absence is the greatest problem America faces. When things get bad enough, one of the parties will have to talk about it. Until then, be prepared for soem tough years in America, and keep your hardhats on.
November 18th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
As I have said before, if women are so independent, just look at the covers of women’s magazines the next time you’re waiting in line at the super-market.
They are a little sexier than the 50’s but it’s still about getting a man, breaking up with a man, foo, diets and looking beautiful.
Those magazines wouldn’t stay there if they didn’t sell.
One other comment. Has anyone ever seen a book with the title, “How to Find a Wife?”.
November 18th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
All,
A Marriage Strike does not truly fulfill the needs of young men, who naturally want to have a healthy relationship and marriage to a woman. That is why planning one’s life to live and work abroad, to marry there and stay there, is the rest of the answer.
I would point out that the “marriage strike” is already well underway, if social data is correct. Men are naturally boycotting marriage here because they know it is a rigged proposition. So, organizing a marriage strike would not do anything that is not already going on.
However, it appears to me that truly “organizing it” into an proactive movement might be far more difficult than we imagine. A lot of young men are what psychologists call “lost children” — not involved and trying to stay out of trouble by staying out of sight. Men on campuses, who have to walk on eggshells around the feminist hierarchy in order to graduate, are notoriously difficult to organize. They are terrified of the wrath feminists can inflict on students who get out of line (in reality, there is much more bark than bite — but most men are terrified of being called a bigot and a woman hater in public). There is a much larger group of uneducated men, often living on the fringe of society working dead-end jobs, playing videogames or hanging out in chat rooms.
The huge problem with addressing these sorts of maladaptive behaviors is to get the individual to see what they are doing, why they are doing it, show them how to achieve political change, and motivate them to get involved. That means that two defense mechanisms on the onion that have to be peeled away before we can even reach these guys.
So, it appears to me that a “marriage strike” would have to be more an acknowledgement of what is going on, perhaps led by a few fearless and dedicated leaders who, over time, would be willing to spend a lot of time going to college campuses organizing men who are sick and tired of it all. We would have to speak for the masses, and not expect tremendous grassroots involvement in the early stages. However, with brilliant organizing on college campuses, it is possible to ignite a sea-change break-out movement. There are some young men who are very angry about all this stuff, and they are the individuals most likely to break out of the feminist mold and stand their ground no matter what. It would only take one major campus to make this a national story.
November 18th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Denis said:
“Nothing less than the collapse of society, or at the very least, getting close to the edge of collapse, will change things. When that happens, women will need men a Hell of a lot more than men will need women.”
Women need men NOW a lot more than we need them. If they didn’t “need” us, they wouldn’t be trying to turn us into slaves. The only rational response is to not care, to not let our emotions be used against us. Emotion and caring are women’s games, we cannot win at them and should not seek to. Refuse to be a slave.
November 17th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
You don’t have to get married to be destroyed by the courts. They can do everything to a single man, and then some, that they do to a victim of divorce.
The only surefire way to avoid becoming a slave to the state is to stay away from women altogether.
Just try explaining that to a young man in his late teens or twenties.
Every generation wants to pass on their knowledge about how to avoid the pitfalls of life, but few children learn from our experiences, they learn from their own.
We need to do more than hope for a public debate on this issue.
Kevin Merck
November 17th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
{The following post showed up as post #52 and then disappeared. I will retry this again}
Stephen- excellent column. You are a true scholar and leader in the men’s movement.
The column illustrates that political movements are typically bottom-up. Men here who are content being in the Commenter Class, and that includes myself, have been saying this message for years. Fourthwire, one of the more articulate commenters, has held this position for years also.
I believe someone above commented that things started to go bad for men around the time women got the right to vote. The message being that because they could vote, they could then also vote for policy favoring them. The first part is incorrect but the second part is correct.
Men have been screwed since the mid-1800’s. Please check out the following link sometime:
http://mensnewsdaily.com/blog/channel1/2005/11/margaret-sanger-more-feminist-hate.htm
The WKKK was the presursor was the Modern Women’s Movement. The book “Women of the Klan – Racism and Gender in the 1920’s”
by Kathleen M. Blee (University of California Press, 1992ISBN 0-520-07876-4 (ppb.)) documents extensively the direct lineage between Modern Feminism and the Women’s Ku Klux Klan (WKKK).
The WKKK became a very powerful controlling force both in the KKK as well as society itself. Women used various “informal networks” through churches, schools, neighborhoods, and various social groups. They formed “poison squads”, which were used to spread rumors, create sexual fears about black men, initiate “selective shopping” boycotts, and pass political information around.
Lynchings of Black men were common in the Old South. Most of these were instigated in defense of “white womanhood”. The author writes that the WKKK “dissolved a myriad of social, economic, and racial issues into powerful symbols of womanhood and sexual virtue”. Lulu Markwell, a President of the WKKK wrote, “It is the duty of the American mother to stamp out vice and immorality.” This overblown sexual imagery galvanized millions of American men to rise to the mindless protection of the purity of Protestant white woman. A Black man simply needed to be accused of rape, or of somehow spoiling white womanhoods sexual virtue and he would be hung. White men commited acts of evil in the name of evil White women.
The KKK came to believe that womanhood represented “all that is best, and noblest, and highest in life”, wherein “No race, or society, or country can rise higher than its womanhood”. Sounds alot like today’s (and yesterday’s) feminists.
The famous 1960’s feminist mantra, “No will man say that in the hand of woman rests the necessity of rocking a cradle only. She has within her hand the power to rule the world”, was actually published by the WKKK in Evansville, Indiana in the late 1880’s.
The 19th century WKKK essentially softened up political resistance to the Modern Women Movement during this time, in much the same way the military uses Navy artillery or stealth bombers to soften up enemy target before the manned assault.
The mid-1800s led to the late 1800s and then the early 20th century. Like a virus feminism continued to adapt. The early 20th century saw the birth of Marxism. Please read my commentary at:
http://mensnewsdaily.com/2006/08/04/radical-feminists-useful-idiots/
Marxism became vogue rather quickly. Schools and “think tanks” were established with the most influential (for America) being The Frankfurt School.
This was a Marxist school made up of philospohers and other elites at the time, in Germany, around the 1920s. They fled Germany during Hitler’s reign (he actually gave them incentives to leave as he hated Marxists)and set up shop in the U.S., notably at Columbia University in NYC. They gained a lot of influence with elites in this country, including the government, corporations, universities, and foundations. If people wonder why the rich and famous considered Marxism “chic” in the 1960s, and why so many activists then had Marxist leanings, well, The Frankfurt School had much influence on this. Graduates of The Frankfurt School at Columbia reached high places within governmnet, corporations, universities, foundations. The goal of The Franfurt School was replacing the current social order with what we see today. The Family was one of their main targets. They have realized most, if not all, of their goals from 60 years ago.
What the Marxists have ingeniously discovered is that they could spread Marxism throughout a society and achieve their aims through the women. They were able to identify female traits and male traits and leverage these to push through Marxism.
One example: men lose much of their rationalism with regards to women. That is why we see so many manginas today. Chivalry is another example. The blind mindset among so many men concerning the protection of women and their interests. Except today they are protecting pythons. It is the same belief that “womanhood represented “all that is best, and noblest, and highest in life”, wherein “No race, or society, or country can rise higher than its womanhood”". It is why every member of the U.S. Congress voted for the VAWA. Better to take away the rights of ALL men because of the bad behavior of a very small minority of men-these are women afterall! It is also why we don’t see any women complaining about this special treatment they receive. THAT is an example of the nature of women. “Better to enslave all men so that WE women can benefit.” It is also because of nature, that men rarely speak about the sacrifices of other men. When was the last time you heard the name of a brave man who died in Iraq? We are invisible-especially when it concerns the good things we have done: sacrifice. It is also because of nature that men exaggerate the efforts of women. Remember Jessica Lynch? Hillary Clinton knows how to use this female advantage over men. She was finally treated like other candidates and forced into a corner to actually give an answer to a question. As expected, the moderator was attacked for beating up on a woman. Now the media does’nt know how to approach her.
Men treat each other differently than relative to how they treat and view women. And women treat each other differently relative to how they treat and view men. What this, in the end, leads to is unfair treatment against men and unfair treatment favoring women. The women are okay with this, and the men are either also okay with this (the mangina’s & chivarists) or they are at a loss to know what to do about it (many MRAs).
The Marxists also ingeniously figured out that by going after the young they can change the future towards their goals. It is because of their significant progress over the last 4 decades that half of this countries population is treated unfairly in the courts, the legislatures, business, schools, and just about everywhere else and yet nobody complains very much and nobody really know how to change such a huge cultural paradigm shift. The women have the largesse of rights, privileges, and advantages yet many feel like victims. The men have seen their rights and status destroyed yet many are in the dark about this, some are okay with this as mangina’s, and others simply do not know what to do about it. In two generations, marriage will be extinct, and quite possibly, nobody will think there is anything strange about that.
It’s all about nature (the nature of men versus the nature of women) and time.
The Marxist’s have figured this out.
Today, the Marxist’s and Capitalist’s have gone to bed. It’s all about raw power. The family is the greatest force against a powerful and dominating government. A strong family needs only one car, one house, one refrigerator, one….on and on. Broken or non existant families will double the market for goods and services. Again, the government and corporations work together and the marxists and capitalists work together. Since corporations look like a snapshot of a socialist organization today, one could say that the capitalists have become socialists in how they run the business. But socialists too enjoy money (for themselves and their shareholders). In the past, corporations promoted women’s issues (affirmative action). Now they’ve taken things to the next step: diversity. This will soon include, gays, lesbians, transgender groups targeted for privilege. Other groups have already been welcomed into the Diversity Tent. (Sorry, Caucasian males are still banished to the plantation).
Another area in which corporations and government work together is in labor supply. Rapidly doubling the workforce as was done when women entered in large numbers will drive down incomes. This benefits corporations. And again, it is government who is the front-man for corporations, as it is the governmnet who enforces affirmative action. Look at the illegal alien situation tody. The government is doing the dirty work for business to keep a steady supply of even more cheap labor. The government does not give a fig about “citizenship”, the middle class, or the taxpayers that make it possible for the government to even operate. They work for the corporations. Raw power. In the hands of a few.
Men have been screwed long before women got the vote. Nothing less than the collapse of society, or at the very least, getting close to the edge of collapse, will change things. When that happens, women will need men a Hell of a lot more than men will need women.
So yes.
To Hell with marriage in America.
Young men: find love elsewhere.
November 17th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Sorry to get off target: the polling for Marc Rudov’s latest debate (regarding tasers) on Fox’s show with Cavuto apears to be rigged. It started out at Lis-66% vs. Marc 34% and has not changed since. I don’t know if my own vote was counted.
I emailed Cavuto at:
cavuto@foxnews.com
to express my complaint at this “problem” or “intentional rigging”. I told them I was a regular viewer of Cavuto and especially of Marc’s debates and that I was deeply disappointed in Fox’s lack of fairness and balance.
November 17th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
I stated above:
“What this, in the end, leads to is unfair treatment against men and unfair treatment favoring men.”
What I meant to say (typo):
“What this, in the end, leads to is unfair treatment against men and unfair treatment favoring WOmen.”
November 17th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Stephen- excellent column. You are a true scholar and leader in the men’s movement.
The column illustrates that political movements are typically bottom-up. Men here who are content being in the Commenter Class, and that includes myself, have been saying this message for years. Fourthwire, one of the more articulate commenters, has held this position for years also.
I believe someone above commented that things started to go bad for men around the time women got the right to vote. The message being that because they could vote, they could then also vote for policy favoring them. The first part is incorrect but the second part is correct.
Men have been screwed since the mid-1800’s. Please check out the following link sometime:
http://mensnewsdaily.com/blog/channel1/2005/11/margaret-sanger-more-feminist-hate.htm
The WKKK was the presursor was the Modern Women’s Movement. The book “Women of the Klan – Racism and Gender in the 1920’s”
by Kathleen M. Blee (University of California Press, 1992ISBN 0-520-07876-4 (ppb.)) documents extensively the direct lineage between Modern Feminism and the Women’s Ku Klux Klan (WKKK).
The WKKK became a very powerful controlling force both in the KKK as well as society itself. Women used various “informal networks” through churches, schools, neighborhoods, and various social groups. They formed “poison squads”, which were used to spread rumors, create sexual fears about black men, initiate “selective shopping” boycotts, and pass political information around.
Lynchings of Black men were common in the Old South. Most of these were instigated in defense of “white womanhood”. The author writes that the WKKK “dissolved a myriad of social, economic, and racial issues into powerful symbols of womanhood and sexual virtue”. Lulu Markwell, a President of the WKKK wrote, “It is the duty of the American mother to stamp out vice and immorality.” This overblown sexual imagery galvanized millions of American men to rise to the mindless protection of the purity of Protestant white woman. A Black man simply needed to be accused of rape, or of somehow spoiling white womanhoods sexual virtue and he would be hung. White men commited acts of evil in the name of evil White women.
The KKK came to believe that womanhood represented “all that is best, and noblest, and highest in life”, wherein “No race, or society, or country can rise higher than its womanhood”. Sounds alot like today’s (and yesterday’s) feminists.
The famous 1960’s feminist mantra, “No will man say that in the hand of woman rests the necessity of rocking a cradle only. She has within her hand the power to rule the world”, was actually published by the WKKK in Evansville, Indiana in the late 1880’s.
The 19th century WKKK essentially softened up political resistance to the Modern Women Movement during this time, in much the same way the military uses Navy artillery or stealth bombers to soften up enemy target before the manned assault.
The mid-1800s led to the late 1800s and then the early 20th century. Like a virus feminism continued to adapt. The early 20th century saw the birth of Marxism. Please read my commentary at:
http://mensnewsdaily.com/2006/08/04/radical-feminists-useful-idiots/
Marxism became vogue rather quickly. Schools and “think tanks” were established with the most influential (for America) being The Frankfurt School.
This was a Marxist school made up of philospohers and other elites at the time, in Germany, around the 1920s. They fled Germany during Hitler’s reign (he actually gave them incentives to leave as he hated Marxists)and set up shop in the U.S., notably at Columbia University in NYC. They gained a lot of influence with elites in this country, including the government, corporations, universities, and foundations. If people wonder why the rich and famous considered Marxism “chic” in the 1960s, and why so many activists then had Marxist leanings, well, The Frankfurt School had much influence on this. Graduates of The Frankfurt School at Columbia reached high places within governmnet, corporations, universities, foundations. The goal of The Franfurt School was replacing the current social order with what we see today. The Family was one of their main targets. They have realized most, if not all, of their goals from 60 years ago.
What the Marxists have ingeniously discovered is that they could spread Marxism throughout a society and achieve their aims through the women. They were able to identify female traits and male traits and leverage these to push through Marxism.
One example: men lose much of their rationalism with regards to women. That is why we see so many manginas today. Chivalry is another example. The blind mindset among so many men concerning the protection of women and their interests. Except today they are protecting pythons. It is the same belief that “womanhood represented “all that is best, and noblest, and highest in life”, wherein “No race, or society, or country can rise higher than its womanhood”". It is why every member of the U.S. Congress voted for the VAWA. Better to take away the rights of ALL men because of the bad behavior of a very small minority of men-these are women afterall! It is also why we don’t see any women complaining about this special treatment they receive. THAT is an example of the nature of women. “Better to enslave all men so that WE women can benefit.” It is also because of nature, that men rarely speak about the sacrifices of other men. When was the last time you heard the name of a brave man who died in Iraq? We are invisible-especially when it concerns the good things we have done: sacrifice. It is also because of nature that men exaggerate the efforts of women. Remember Jessica Lynch? Hillary Clinton knows how to use this female advantage over men. She was finally treated like other candidates and forced into a corner to actually give an answer to a question. As expected, the moderator was attacked for beating up on a woman. Now the media does’nt know how to approach her.
Men treat each other differently than relative to how they treat and view women. And women treat each other differently relative to how they treat and view men. What this, in the end, leads to is unfair treatment against men and unfair treatment favoring men. The women are okay with this, and the men are either also okay with this (the mangina’s & chivarists) or they are at a loss to know what to do about it (many MRAs).
The Marxists also ingeniously figured out that by going after the young they can change the future towards their goals. It is because of their significant progress over the last 4 decades that half of this countries population is treated unfairly in the courts, the legislatures, business, schools, and just about everywhere else and yet nobody complains very much and nobody really know how to change such a huge cultural paradigm shift. The women have the largesse of rights, privileges, and advantages yet many feel like victims. The men have seen their rights and status destroyed yet many are in the dark about this, some are okay with this as mangina’s, and others simply do not know what to do about it. In two generations, marriage will be extinct, and quite possibly, nobody will think there is anything strange about that.
It’s all about nature (the nature of men versus the nature of women) and time.
The Marxist’s have figured this out.
Today, the Marxist’s and Capitalist’s have gone to bed. It’s all about raw power. The family is the greatest force against a powerful and dominating government. A strong family needs only one car, one house, one refrigerator, one….on and on. Broken or non existant families will double the market for goods and services. Again, the government and corporations work together and the marxists and capitalists work together. Since corporations look like a snapshot of a socialist organization today, one could say that the capitalists have become socialists in how they run the business. But socialists too enjoy money (for themselves and their shareholders). In the past, corporations promoted women’s issues (affirmative action). Now they’ve taken things to the next step: diversity. This will soon include, gays, lesbians, transgender groups targeted for privilege. Other groups have already been welcomed into the Diversity Tent. (Sorry, Caucasian males are still banished to the plantation).
Another area in which corporations and government work together is in labor supply. Rapidly doubling the workforce as was done when women entered in large numbers will drive down incomes. This benefits corporations. And again, it is government who is the front-man for corporations, as it is the governmnet who enforces affirmative action. Look at the illegal alien situation tody. The government is doing the dirty work for business to keep a steady supply of even more cheap labor. The government does not give a fig about “citizenship”, the middle class, or the taxpayers that make it possible for the government to even operate. They work for the corporations. Raw power. In the hands of a few.
Men have been screwed long before women got the vote. Nothing less than the collapse of society, or at the very least, getting close to the edge of collapse, will change things. When that happens, women will need men a Hell of a lot more than men will need women.
So yes.
To Hell with marriage in America.
Young men: find love elsewhere.
November 16th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Well said Usher in #36.
America has proven herself hostile toward the average guy in family, health, work, education, justice, and mercy.