Gender roles in marriage. Do some men just have a problem with women?

[EmilyAlexandra]

To be honest I find this question more than a bit unfair. To bring race, IQ, class distinctions and such things into a discussion is unfair and quite an ad hominem.

I honestly did not intend the question to be unfair. I am not sure how you could say that it is ad hominem. If you are going to make a bold claim such as that men and women are not equal “as commonly meant”, you have to expect that people will question that claim and seek clarification.

It’s perfectly reasonably to say that people are different. Clearly Usain Bolt and Boris Johnson are different. I am sure that Boris Johnson has never been able to run 100 metres in under 10 seconds. I am sure that Usain Bolt has never uttered the phrase “great supine protoplasmic invertebrate jellies”. However, it would never have occurred to me to say that they are not equal “as commonly meant”.

I think I can possibly see what you are saying, but I am not convinced that it is helpful, or a good idea, to bring the concept of equality into it. If you are talking about “hard physical differences”, people who are disabled in some way would presumably fall into the category of “not equal as commonly meant”. You would presumably have to say that Stevie Wonder and Kanye West are “not equal” because one of them is blind. You would presumably have to say that FDR and JFK were “not equal” because only one of them was paralysed by (probably) Guillain–Barré syndrome. I honestly think you would be on safer ground just saying that people are difference, rather than bringing in the concept of equality.

 

[Peeps]

The problem is finding a job in a smaller town. There are plenty of people in NYC/LA/DC who would love to move to a smaller, more affordable place but can’t because the type of work they do is concentrated in major cities.

I agree that if your work is such that you have to work in a large, metro area like Chicago or New York City, it’s expensive and time consuming to commute from the city to the suburbs, and frankly, the Chicago suburb homes are really expensive.

However, many people in the U.S. are willing to drive a longer distance from their city job in order to afford a bigger/better home in a smaller town/city.

In our city, about 25% of the people work in downtown Chicago, and drive around a hundred miles one way twice a day. Some of them drive less distance and park at one of the train stations, then catch the train into downtown Chicago.

Many of these people say that in our city with their salary, they can afford a literal mansion in in a rural setting, plus they don’t have to put their kids in Chicago schools, but can afford a small private school in our city. In Chicago or one of the suburbs, they would have to settle for a small walk-up flat with no garage and no yard (street parking on very old and narrow street).

So for them, the drive is worth it. And once they get outside the city, the drive is through farm country–very pretty and restorative!

Yes, we have high property taxes, but if 25% of the people consider the drive and the taxes a better deal than living in Chicago/suburbs, well…to each their own!

I personally love driving five minutes from my house to my job at the hospital! I can get more sleep and more home time!

For many years, my husband has worked from home at his computer job. I believe that post-COVID, many people will work from home, as it is cheaper for companies–they don’t have to provide an office/break room, etc. for many employees.

I have to admit, I’m kind of curious about what jobs can only be done in large cities. My daughter works in the entertainment industry, and yes, to work on Broadway, she kind of has to live in New York City (although she just moved away from there a few weeks ago). Certain artistic jobs require a big city location.

But so many other jobs can be done in smaller cities or even small towns. E.g., medicine–almost any small city has a hospital (we have three fairly big hospitals and also a medical school and a university). We have various scientific companies, computer companies, etc. And with so much online technology, it’s possible that many jobs that were once done in big office buildings can be done from home in a small town or city.

If you have time, let me know what jobs you’re thinking of that can only be done in a large city. Thanks!

 

[Sarcelle]

Ugh!

I despise driving and especially despise driving in heavy traffic.

I don’t know how others withstand the commute. The stress, the enforced idleness. It’s not good for one’s health.

 

[DarkLight]

Ugh!

I despise driving and especially despise driving in heavy traffic.

I don’t know how others withstand the commute. The stress, the enforced idleness. It’s not good for one’s health.

Rosary podcast. Helps with the stress and gives you something productive to do.

Before coronavirus I was commuting just over an hour each way to work. Not exactly my favorite, but it would cost me nearly a thousand a month more to live nearer to work. I know I’m not spending that much in gas and other car costs.

 

[Sarcelle]

Driving is an occasion of sin for me.

I lost my job due to COVID and I am looking for jobs that will enable me to work from home. I just cannot enjoy driving.

 

[Anicette]

I don’t think there is a dichotomy between feelings and providing. People, traditional or not, try to have both, a balance with more or less sucess.

Our values and desires influence us strongly in what we mean for marriage.

But there are also others parameters, that can trap us or direct us toward some life’s organisation.

For eg, in general, people who met or marry at a young age, such as your are more concern about who is the person and love feelings. They don’t have a lot of experience of life and more ideals.

People who marry older (such as in their late 20s) are much more practical, materialistics and less romantical. They have more experience and know that work and money is a determining factor as the the opprtunities that would open in life. They would want and care much more to find a person with a decent to good salary. If the woman want to stay at home, she need a man with a full time job, so she would refuse to consider a man who is struggling to find a job as a husband.

I would also add, that I peronally don’t think that your marriage is an exemple to follow. If I am remembering correctly, you are in your late 30’s (37?) yet you mention you want to have children but don’t choose to do it yet. You certainely have goods reasons, but for a person for whom it is very important to have children would not have wait more than 15 years to do it. It reduces greatly the chances to have an offspring a day and the number of children.

there’s a current thread about how college women should prioritise marriage and family.

I agree that women should prioritarize marriage and family. It is more of a man’s role to provide.

countless posts that are very negative towards feminism, often portraying feminism as something malign.

The problem here is that when we speak of traditional’s gender roles and that some women and men want to follow them, we are always labeled as anti feminism as if it is an absolute evil. Everywhere it ispreach that it is a discrimination to end that mother work less paid hours than fathers for eg. It cut all the debate and many people feels a straitjacket around them that prevent them to follow what they feel best for them.

So you close the debate here. Our point are not valids.

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

I peronally don’t think that your marriage is an exemple to follow. If I am remembering correctly, you are in your late 30’s (37?) yet you mention you want to have children but don’t choose to do it yet. You certainely have goods reasons, but for a person for whom it is very important to have children would not have wait more than 15 years to do it. It reduces greatly the chances to have an offspring a day and the number of children.

I never said that my marriage was an example for others to follow. I also do not think that we have been especially unwise. We have encountered some bad luck along the way. In our wedding vows, we say the words, “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health”. In France I believe it is similar (dans le bonheur et dans les épreuves, dans la santé et dans la maladie). They are vows that I take seriously.

We did not want to have children as soon as we were married. I am sure that a Catholic couple who marry at 21 do so in the expectation that they may well have their first child by the time that they are 22. We are not Catholic and that was never our plan. My plan was to aim to have my first child by the age of 31. That way, I would have a full decade of my career behind me, and my husband would have had the time to complete his MA and PhD and establish himself in his career with one major published work. It seemed like a good plan at the time. What I could not have foreseen was that my husband would become unwell and have to change his career. As a wife, I felt that my first responsibility was to look after him, not to get pregnant, so we put that off until he was in good health and happy in a new job.

I also had not planned for the possibility that I would find it difficult to get pregnant in my early 30s. I knew that I could not expect to get pregnant easily in my late 30s or early 40s, but in my early 30s I did not think that this would be a problem. I have been pregnant, but those pregnancies have ended in miscarriages. Since the subject has now come up, I don’t mind saying that I currently pregnant. We are, of course, extremely anxious all the time. I told my gynaecologist that I feel stupid and guilty because I did not prioritise trying to get pregnant 10 years earlier, but he assures me that I probably would have found conception and pregnancy difficult at any age, which is actually comforting.

It is more of a man’s role to provide.

It’s not clear to me why it should be a man’s role to provide. Some men are good at providing, and some women are also good at providing. My husband does not have an aptitude for making a lot of money, but he is very good at almost everything else.

P.S. I am 38. Also, you could look at this another way: suppose I said I was a housewife and my husband is a zookeeper who is studying for a degree to improve his career prospects. That would sound like I had married a great guy who is working hard to provide for me. It’s only because I have a career of my own and my husband previously had a “better” career that it sounds like I am in a bad marriage.

 

[blackforest]

Great post.

We’ve longed lived by the financial advice of living as though on one income even when a second spouse earns an income; however, housing over-inflation is unfortunately rendering even the simplest living arrangement impossible with this model.

The killer in the south of England is the cost of housing.

I’m not sure how we compare in the U.K., but people are feeling the housing pinch here, too.

Equality is the belief that through education and nurturing individuals can be raised to the same exact state as one another. I deny that, especially when you’re dealing with something as genetic and physical as sex differences.

When it comes to hard physical difference such as sex, human beings are not equal. A man cannot give birth and a woman cannot fertilize. Therefore they are unequal.

You’ve just contradicted yourself and equivocated on the word “equality.”

To repeat, there’s a difference between equality of conditions - e.g. ability to give birth or fertilize - and equality of opportunity, e.g. ability to become an engineer, teacher, or political official.

There are a lot of places in the U.S. where people can rent/buy very affordable houses or apartments/flats.

But there’s the usual caveat: Lack of employment. Largely due to the agribusiness take over of small farms, rural areas are cheap but dying.

My mom and I had an interesting conversation about whether or not it’s possible simply to “opt out” of the middle class. (Note that we can only have this conversation because we’re privileged enough to make such a theoretical choice).

Rather than keeping up with the Joneses and paying for upper/middle class Jones-y things - RVs, summer camp for the kids, Wally World vacations, 2500+ square feet - what if my husband worked at a small-town Ace Hardware and I sold home-canned pickles while we lived in a tiny (by today’s standards) post-WWII brick home? Could we make it?

Sadly, given today’s housing prices even in a lot of small towns, I have my doubts.

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

@MNathaniel Thanks, sorry I didn’t “like” this at the time - there were suddenly about 100 replies to read! A few years ago I did stumble upon one of those pickup websites. I think I was actually Googling something about planning a holiday to Mongolia (like, looking up bars or restaurants or something), and I found a whole forum about, basically, how attractive (or unattractive) Mongolian women are and how easy (or difficult) it is to get them into bed. I got the impression that they were a bunch of losers. They kept talking about having “game”, and said things like, “before I had game”, or, “when my game wasn’t as good”. The thing that sticks in my mind, however, was that one of them described a woman he had had sex with as “a human petri dish”, because he had caught various STIs from her. He said that after that he wasn’t going to have sex with another woman ever again, although for some reason he was still hanging out with his buddies online.

As you say, there is clearly nothing remotely Christian about any of this. Quite the opposite. That said, I think there is some intersection between the MRA/MGTOW/Incel/Red Pill ideology and the anti-feminist backlash among some conservative Christians. Not to say that the Christians exactly support or endorse the MRA types, nor that the MRA types base their ideology on Christianity, but there is a point at which their beliefs converge or intersect. Searching for this topic, I came across this thread, for example:

Using most of the MGTOW Philosophy in choosing the right women? Catholic Living

Is it bad to use most of the MGTOW Philosophy in choosing the right women for marriage? What are your thoughts about it? That’s why I am using the word ‘most’ because some of the ideas and philosophies are wrong and reject the virtue of hope and humility like hating women and acting bitter against them. I know it’s hard to come by with a woman who takes responsibility to their actions, women who is described in Proverbs 31:10-31, and most of all who humble themselves before the LORD and Husband.…

The fourth response to that post, which got 23 likes, says, “While I don’t see MGTOW are a solution, I believe such a movement is the inevitable response to third wave feminism.” So, while most responses rightly condemn the MGTOW ideology, a good many responses also try to explain it as a response to feminism and as a response to what they consider to be equally bad behaviour by women. Some of the language used is pretty unpleasant, e.g. describing women as “trashy”. Personally, I would not describe a human being as “trashy”.

 

[Useless]

your opinions are in line with the mainstream. people who have incel philosophy (like myself) are so rare, even on the internet. we only seem like there are so many of us because you never notice the ten million people who all agree with you you only notice the one person who says something you think is outrageous. even in the men’s rights movement and mgtow and red-pill forums, incels are a tiny minority. the vast majority of people who “have a problem with feminism” just have a problem with gloria stienem, they don’t actually have a problem with the idea of feminism. most traditionalists will harp on feminism all day but will threaten and bully real anti-feminists like incels. so don’t worry, you are in the 99.999999% majority and us mean old incels are and always will be literally nothing.

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

I’m not sure how we compare in the U.K., but people are feeling the housing pinch here, too.

It’s very regional. As @Peeps says with regard to the US, some jobs have to be done in big cities, others can be done in smaller cities or even not in cities at all. I know a younger woman (about 22) who is in the process of becoming a solicitor. She’s from just outside Manchester and has decided to make her career in Manchester. One can have a perfectly decent career as a solicitor in Manchester. Obviously if you want to work at the absolute highest level of commercial law and earn more than £1 million per year, you probably have to do that in London, but that’s not what most people are aiming for. I think it’s a sensible decision to work outside London: the pay isn’t quite as good, but it’s almost as good, while the cost of housing is drastically cheaper. You might get 90% of the salary, but only have to pay 20% of the cost of housing.

@Useless I am not sure how serious you are. I does not sound like a very happy way to live.

 

[Useless]

who said I was happy?

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

Nobody did say that you were happy. Your username is “Useless”. You describe yourself as “mean” and “literally nothing”. Clearly neither you, nor anybody else, is describing you as seeming happy. Wouldn’t you rather try to deal with your problems than just wallow in an ideology that seems guaranteed to make you feel even worse?

 

[DarkLight]

A new user, and the first post is to declare yourself an incel in a thread talking about feminism. I am curious what the reason for that is?

 

[Useless]

and who do you suggest can solve my problems? do you even know what my problem is? the mistake so many of you make is that you think the ideology made the man, and not the man who made the ideology. people don’t become “incels” because they choose to be incels they become incels because there is nothing for them in this world. you can’t solve this problem. you can’t fix it. only God can fix it. anyway, i answered your original question. you are not in an outlier, most men are your allies and they always will be. inceldom is by definition not the norm. the disagreements you have with some of your fellow catholics about feminism are ninety percent semantics and ten percent intentionally missing the point. my username is because there is a one hundred percent chance that i will be banned and deleted very soon because the power always resides in the hands of your side. which once again proves thag you are in the majority. oh well, that’s what i get for trying to reassure my enemies. we’re not even allowed to be nice. even our kindness is unwanted lol what a world!

 

[Useless]

think of the word “incel” as a batman signal for people like me. the reason was to try to reassure op that she should not worry because there is no such thing as a mainstream “anti feminist” movement in catholicism or anywhere else. there is literally just a handful of lonely dudes who are literally powerless except for the occasional troll post.

 

[redbetta]

@Useless,

I don’t know you and I am not going to pretend to know what your problem is or how to fix it. I do feel bad because men and boys are in a lot of ways a forgotten demographic in our society and I do want that to change. So, here, have a hug. I know it is not much, but here it is. PM me if you need someone to talk to.

 

[Anicette]

Congratulations for your pregnancy!

I don’t think that your marriage seems a bad marriage, your choices sound wise to you. I just said that I don’t believe that it is wise if the society encourage to delay to have children until our last 30’s.

For the vows, in the Catholic Church, it is a dialogue between the priest and the fiancés. The sentence “dans le bonheur et les épreuves” that is so popular in american moovies is only one of the possible options, but not a mandate. The emphasis is more on the faithfullness for all the life, the liberty of consent and the acceptation of the responsability of husband and wife and of parents.

For the role of providers, I think each person has is individual talents and choose to grow it or not. But definitely after motherhood the cards are redistributed again. It is the woman who bear the child- nothing new- but it takes 9 months and many women would be limited in their ability to work during it. After the birth, she will feed the baby and he will be dependant on his mother as with nobody else. Breasteeding is the last reproductive step. She will also have to recover to a potentially difficult birth and yes babies are not born to sleep all the day- and certainely not the night. So the gender’s role would be different again for a few years.

And if the mother choose to homeschooled - I know it is rare- the differences will be great for another couple if years.

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

@MNathaniel I think the novels you were thinking of may be the Gor novels by John Norman (real name Dr John Lange). I have never read them, but as I understand it they are interpreted on three different levels: (1) people who just read them as science fiction, (2) people who incorporate themes from the novels into sexual role play, (3) people who seem to think that the novels provide a blueprint for their actual lives (one man ended up in prison as a result).

England even had rules on who was allowed to wear what.

We still do, in a way. There are all kinds of “rules” that function as shibboleths. If you keep to members of your own class, or thereabouts, you aren’t really aware of this, but once you start to become socially mobile you are made aware of these things. To be clear, contrary to the impression I have apparently given, my background could be described as somewhere between the working class and the underclass. However, I have subsequently met people from the complete opposite end of the spectrum. It’s little things. For example, a man isn’t supposed to have a pocket on his shirt unless he has something to put in it. Thus, pockets on shirts denote being a tradesman or labourer. There are other ridiculous rules, such as that men don’t wear brown shoes in London. None of these rules matter until you meet people who actually know (and care) about them.

It’s probably the same as not wearing white after Labor Day in the US. I mentioned not wearing white after Labor Day to a friend from the US and she had no idea what I was talking about. I only knew about it because it was joked about in Frasier.

The popularity of “Fifty Shades of Gray” proved that some women like the idea of being dominated.

Yes… The books were enormously popular, despite being the most appallingly badly written trash I think I’ve ever seen (I read the “highlights”, such as the tampon scene, which was not remotely erotic, but was unintentionally hilarious). The curious thing is that anybody who has read the books and who has also lived the BDSM lifestyle says that actual BDSM is nothing like the fantasy described in the books. From what I could gather, the books are basically about a woman being abused by a psychopath. People who are BDSM enthusiasts in real life say that consent is essential and that the submissive partner is actually the one who is in control, which I guess makes sense.

Or they expect that any woman they’d sleep with must look like a Victoria’s Secret model

Admittedly, I am not exactly the target market for Victoria’s Secret models, but I’ve never got why they have become a byword for female beauty. No doubt they are all very attractive young ladies, but it’s a very particular type of beauty. And I don’t even think the products they model are anything to write home about! The “flagship store” on New Bond Street is easily the tackiest shop in London. Still, it’s a fair point. There’s a certain kind of man who does think that every woman should look like a Victoria’s Secret model.

 

[Peeps]

Victoria’s Secret models, but I’ve never got why they have become a byword for female beauty.

They aren’t now. Most women’s magazines and many television shows and movies are making sure to include “curvy” women, women who are very large, and women who have other traits (e.g., certain skin conditions, a large derriere, etc.). I’m rather glad about this!

I just wish they would feature and praise women who have really big feet (larger than size 10). This is really difficult to live with, as most of the women’s shoe brands stop at size eleven, and many of their larger sizes are very narrow (the assumption is that women with larger feet also have narrow feet). I am a very rare woman because I only own 3 pairs of shoes–a pair of men’s athletic shoes (which I also wear to work at the hospital), a pair of cheap slip ons (which I wear with dresses, and which are very uncomfortable), and a pair of moccasins which I use as house slippers). I also own one pair of waterproof boots that I wear in the winter in deep snow. I would love to own more shoes, but they’re hard to find and it’s a major downer for me to go “shoe shopping”. I have been considering getting custom-made shoes–yes, they cost several hundred dollars a pair, but it would be worth it to be comfortable AND attractive!