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All the single ladies(Atlantic article)
#1

All the single ladies(Atlantic article)

I don't know if this piece has been discussed before, but I just came across a whopper of an article about a single aging woman who breaks off a relationship with a perfectly decent guy because she felt something was "missing" and finds herself now single 10 years later at 39 with no hopes of finding a guy. The article is pretty lengthy and takes off from there into a lot of sociological territory. She's introspective and even poignantly honest in places(such as debunking the equal pay for equal work myth). You can even see how her feminist mother is largely to blame for spreading the poison to her daughter and encouraging this toxic behavior. It's hard to determine what her ultimate conclusion is, but there are a lot of insights into why we got here. And of course the reader comments are often as good or better than the original article.


http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch..._page=true

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In 2001, when I was 28, I broke up with my boyfriend. Allan and I had been together for three years, and there was no good reason to end things. He was (and remains) an exceptional person, intelligent, good-looking, loyal, kind. My friends, many of whom were married or in marriage-track relationships, were bewildered. I was bewildered. To account for my behavior, all I had were two intangible yet undeniable convictions: something was missing; I wasn’t ready to settle down.

The period that followed was awful. I barely ate for sobbing all the time. (A friend who suffered my company a lot that summer sent me a birthday text this past July: “A decade ago you and I were reuniting, and you were crying a lot.”) I missed Allan desperately—his calm, sure voice; the sweetly fastidious way he folded his shirts. On good days, I felt secure that I’d done the right thing. Learning to be alone would make me a better person, and eventually a better partner. On bad days, I feared I would be alone forever. Had I made the biggest mistake of my life?

Ten years later, I occasionally ask myself the same question. Today I am 39, with too many ex-boyfriends to count and, I am told, two grim-seeming options to face down: either stay single or settle for a “good enough” mate. At this point, certainly, falling in love and getting married may be less a matter of choice than a stroke of wild great luck. A decade ago, luck didn’t even cross my mind. I’d been in love before, and I’d be in love again. This wasn’t hubris so much as naïveté; I’d had serious, long-term boyfriends since my freshman year of high school, and simply couldn’t envision my life any differently.

Well, there was a lot I didn’t know 10 years ago. The decision to end a stable relationship for abstract rather than concrete reasons (“something was missing”), [Image: womanhamster.gif] I see now, is in keeping with a post-Boomer ideology that values emotional fulfillment above all else. And the elevation of independence over coupling (“I wasn’t ready to settle down”) is a second-wave feminist idea I’d acquired from my mother, who had embraced it, in part, I suspect, to correct for her own choices.

I was her first and only recruit, marching off to third grade in tiny green or blue T-shirts declaring: A Woman Without a Man Is Like a Fish Without a Bicycle, or: A Woman’s Place Is in the House—and the Senate, and bellowing along to Gloria Steinem & Co.’s feminist-minded children’s album, Free to Be … You and Me (released the same year Title IX was passed, also the year of my birth). Marlo Thomas and Alan Alda’s retelling of “Atalanta,” the ancient Greek myth about a fleet-footed princess who longs to travel the world before finding her prince, became the theme song of my life. Once, in high school, driving home from a family vacation, my mother turned to my boyfriend and me cuddling in the backseat and said, “Isn’t it time you two started seeing other people?” She adored Brian—he was invited on family vacations! But my future was to be one of limitless possibilities, where getting married was something I’d do when I was ready, to a man who was in every way my equal, and she didn’t want me to get tied down just yet.
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#2

All the single ladies(Atlantic article)

Yeah, this one is a classic. I've linked to it a few times but I haven't heard it discussed here directly. It did get some convo over on Hooking Up Smart and a few other sites though.

In short, this article is an indication of some of the feminist limitations I mentioned in this article. Bolick's story is just one sign that the feminist ideal that has been promoted for the past generation or so isn't all it is cracked up to be. The comments on the article caught onto this as well.

Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know yourself but not your enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know thy enemy but not yourself, wallow in defeat every time.
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#3

All the single ladies(Atlantic article)

Here are some choice comments:

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Ken Conrad • 5 months ago −

Her "solution" sounds more like a bunch of women joining a convent, which is exactly what men said would become of women who pursued feminism.

All I can say about this article is that it is wrong. She's reinvented the 90's, told fairy tales about male behavior, as a group and individuals. This uber-successful class of women she keeps talking about only exist in magazine articles.

All you need do is glance at the STD and pregnancy numbers and you see women started playing out some Girls Gone Wild fantasy.
Why aren't the men marrying? Becauase women think being disrespectful and combative towards men is "womanhood." You've turned men off.

Men aren't "falling apart" but it's clear to me women are. They can't decide whether to be leaders, or what to base marriage on. They want to base it on money and at last some of them are realizing that doesn't work. The "single ladies" problem is actually a female maturity problem.

As the writer admits, reluctantly in the end, American women today simply aren't marriage material. Men are going their own way, which is why you don't see men whining about why women aren't marriagible. The media didn't infantilize us into thinking we were entitled to some male fantasy.

Notice how the articles about the marriage gap are all women bemoaning the "lack of men," but when you read them it's all about how the guys weren't perfect. So the women didn't want to "settle?"

Now you see, you weren't "putting off " marriage , you were actually putting of growing up. And don't worry about American men. The economy that you're "excelling" in is a failing one. The she-conomy is an economic freakshow of nursing students, and pantsuit "matriarchs" playing out some power trip. It's a sham that produces nothing. No wonder it's falling apart.

Only a feminist could be proud of that!

Here's an MGTOW type of guy:

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GaryDiNardo • 5 months ago −

This was an amazingly easy article to read without stopping. Thanks.

I was thinking about the 'marrying down' option that women face (as far as income levels) and I think that's concomitant with the drop in the marriage rate. We guys who are probably going to be single for the rest of our lives simply don't HAVE to work hard enough to earn the money that makes us 'catches'. I think guys like me are inherently lazy and being outside of the socially-sanctioned marriage arrangement of my father, I feel free to indulge that laziness by doing my work at my own pace.; I don't have the pressure that he did to provide for a family of 6.

On the other hand, I haven't had a date in over 10 years, but I guess that must be a trade-off that I'm willing to make, despite the fact that I LOVE women and have a lively fantasy life. But I never feel stressed, I'm never sick, and my biggest concern is that I am making enough money so that later on, I don't have to end my days in a Salvation Army barracks.

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confusedfellah • 6 months ago −

Do all women lack empathy or concern for men, or is it just the feminist women writing articles like this? Hannah Rosin's "The End of Men" takes obvious delight in describing what she hopes is men's imminent demise. And Kate Bolick laments how this trend will impact . . . you guessed it: Women!

Apparently, Ms. Bolick is unconcerned about the plight of men. Her only issue is that, since women tend to "marry up," there are not enough "marriageable" men on the market for the sisterhood to pick through.

The cause of this problem is not relevant for women like Bolick and Rosin. The only thing they worry about is how men's transition to becoming the second sex will impact women.

Feminists deliberately poisoned the well between men and women, destroyed their sons' futures by tilting the playing field against them in education and the workplace and killed marriage with their little social experiments. And now they cry victim and yet again try to make men into the bad guys.

We men need to stop worrying about women and start worrying about our own future and the future of our sons. Because it is becoming painfully apparent that women only care about themselves.

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The__Capitalist • 7 months ago −

This woman has been deceived by feminism into childlessness and perpetual single-hood, and as much as she tries to brush it off and explain it away... it is clear that it bothers her.

And YET... here she is doubling down on that ideology that lied to her, and continuing to perpetrate it to the younger generation of women. These younger, indoctrinated feminists need a harsh dose of "biological clock" reality, not more feminist clap-trap and lies.

Bolick does all women a disservice with this article.

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Victor Jackson • 9 months ago −

"We’ve arrived at the top of the staircase, finally ready to
start our lives, only to discover a cavernous room at the tail end of a
party, most of the men gone already, some having never shown up—and
those who remain are leering by the cheese table, or are, you know, the
ones you don’t want to go out with."


What you fail to realize is that you are now one of the women that men do not want to go with any more. Enjoy your table for one at the top of the staircase.

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Jerzy Kaltenberg • 9 months ago −

So essentially it's "Get thee to a nunnery". Pity.

From an average European/Western man's perspective this is not exactly earth shattering stuff.. As Male-Female dynamic change in politics, workplace and society in general, increasingly more men are dropping out of the mating game. Some because of the trauma inflicted on them by women's constant inconstancy ( vide authors' search for mr. right ), some having been brought up by the generation of author's mother retreat into eternal bachelorhood:

Cynthia: I mean the problem is that the good ones know they're good. And
they know they're in such demand they're just not interested in
confining themselves to one person.

Elaine: I hate the good ones.

Cynthia: Is Jerry one of the good ones?

Elaine: That's a good question. I think he thinks he is. http://www.tvfanatic.com/quote...

Others declare for asexuality, some simply plump for hookers, porn and masturbation as the less emotionally and financially damaging alternative.This is the direct result of emancipation and all its collateral; changes in popular attitudes, expectations amongst men and women, opening of opportunities to women. _Not that there's anything wrong with that_, but elevating oneself also - incidentally - lifts one out of the larger pool of available mates. You will have progressively less and less people you can potentially 'settle' with as you leave the gray middle of the gauss curve behind. If, as is so often claimed today, women are inherently 'smarter' and 'better organized' than men, then the 'average' for women will be higher than the average for men, skewing the pool of available mates. This is further skewed by male mating preferences, as many men prefer younger women anyway & are willing to settle for a ditzy, poor but appropriately stacked model over a mature, complex individual with a rich inner life and rapidly aging appearance. Please look at http://blog.okcupid.com/index.... for some sort of corroboration...When Betty Friedan interviewed college aged girls in the 50's and 60's, she was surprised by the number of talented young women bailing on careers and opportunity to pursue professional wifehood:

"I don't want to be interested in a career I'll have to give up. My mother wanted to be a newspaper reporter from the time she was twelve, and I've seen her frustration for twenty years. I don't want to be interested in world affairs. I don't want to be interested in anything beside my home and being a wonderful wife and mother. Maybe education is a liability. Even the brightest boys at home want just a sweet, pretty girl"--The feminine mystique by Betty Friedan, chap.3

In retrospect, the young women who made these decisions appear to have made a correct choice of mating strategy, sad as that is. What I can say with some degree of certainty ( personal experience, so apocryphal - not really evidence) is that men simply give up. Smart, beautiful women are simply too bitchy, needy, frustrated, frustrating and demanding, especially for this average guy, especially since they're likelier to dump me than someone as daft as I am wood be. As I've grown older I've realized that I don't like the daft ones either, which leaves me with fewer and fewer options for any kind of serious relationship.

Seinfeld again:
George: It's hard enough to meet a woman you dislike, much less like.

George: I don't want hope. Hope is killing me. My dream is to become hopeless. When you're hopeless you don't care. And when you don't care, that indifference makes you attractive.

Jerry: So, hopelessness is the key?

George: It's my only hope

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TDubin • 10 months ago −

I worked with a women (educated professional in mid-30s) who complained about having no boyfriend or husband. She had a book on her desk "What To Do Until Love Finds You".

I asked her about it and she said: "I want a man that is tall, good-looking and has a graduate degree".

I stopped her and told her: "That's not a guy, that's a resume".

She had mentioned nothing about feelings, caring, love, trust, togetherness, etc.

I had a friend that worked hard and owned his own house (which he had built with an in-law room to take care of his mom). He lived frugally, didn't drink excessively or gamble, could clean, shop, cook, washed his own clothes (and sew/repair them too), fix your car and was an all-around nice guy.

But ... he was 5' 8" tall, kinda chubby and had a non-professional job ( actually 2) with an airline. The result? No girlfriend, no wife - no decent lady would even talk to him once they found out he was a cargo-mechanic.

The women of today are screwing themselves out of happiness.

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Steve Walser • 10 months ago −
Nothing like talking your book! This is the ultimate of trying to justify the lemons she has made out of the lemonade of her life. I feel profoundly sorry for this woman.
Just what every young woman should aspire to- meaningless, unsatisfying sexual relationships with a constantly changing cast of men leading to a childless, lonely old age among other spinsters who loudly proclaim how "free" they are.

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Hosjfds Bolinao • 11 months ago −

Just reading through the comments I get the general impression that women tend to applaud this article for its blunt honesty and also sympathize with the writer. Men in general seem to be revolting to the whole idea that the author seems to characterize all the available men as either deadbeats or players.

My two cents if anyone cares (and I'm a man just to set the record) is that the so called "feminist movement" if it really exists seems to be having consequences that were not intended. I say if it really exists because I don't think that women are out to get men so to speak, but I do think there are market forces that one cannot control that have put women in better employable positions and given more women power as a result.

The consequences of having more women employed is that more men seem to increasingly find lower prospects for work. If you think about the economy as a pie, I would surmise that it is pretty inelastic in the demand for goods and services. So it would naturally follow that an increase in the labor supply would have to balance itself by taking people out of the workforce or relegating them to lower opportunities. So in essence, some men get less of the pie.

I constantly see statistics referring to the lowest marriage rates and the lowest number of employed men in the past 50 years. Coincidence? Maybe it is merely the consequences of the recession, but maybe the feminist movement is meeting it's breaking point. I'm not a social scientist, so I would rather not theorize on the problem, but I would definitely say that more women in workforce may be part of the blame.

And I by no means am against women in the workforce, I just think that some may not realize the consequences. Maybe if women are earning enough wages to support themselves and a family, they could take the initiative to pursue a man. I guess what I'm saying is that I see an attitude of women that they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want their high paying career, but also want a successful man. If you pursue both, it will have unintended consequences is all I'm saying.

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PaulMorphy • 10 months ago −

A surprisingly candid article written by a woman. Although you still managed to try to blame men for your personal dislike of current social norms. It's really very simple, feminists convinced women that they didn't need men. Then they convinced our government to actively discriminate against men in our educational and judicial system.

As a result men are disadvantaged and crippled. Men like myself who have attended higher education and are deemed by you "marriageable" wouldn't touch the institution with a stick because of the vast inequities contained within. In short, you made your bed so lie in it, alone. While men like me reap the benefits of limitless casual sex with desperate women. Cheers =)

Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know yourself but not your enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know thy enemy but not yourself, wallow in defeat every time.
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#4

All the single ladies(Atlantic article)

A good one from a married guy.

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onlyabill Nelson • a year ago

To start with, I got real lucky and married a wonderful woman and we have been together for 25 years.

That said, with society, marriage laws and the courts currently the way they are (as in anti-male) why would any sane man with means, get married today in the first place?

Just as women have choices, today so do men. Men can adopt, have babies through surrogates, etc. all without a wife. If I were a young man today, the last thing I would do is get married. I would have sex partners but I would not create any long term relationship with any woman. As the article and comments make clear, women still view men as a way to get ahead, to serve to meet her needs and to help support her. Where is the man in the relationship?

Why would I want to work hard, build a life and build assets only to have the courts give at least half of my stuff to my wife when she eventually decides to leave me, for whatever reason? Over half of all divorces are initiated by the wife. In today's society, a wife can do anything, up to and include killing her husband and she will be viewed as the victim and deserving of at least half his stuff.

Woman hold all the cards in a relationships. She chooses who she will date, who she will have sex with, who she will marry, who she will have children with, and when she will divorce him. If he has any assets, when she does divorce him, she gets a big payday.

TV tells a woman she does not need a man. The "it takes a village" crowd tells her she does not need a man. The courts tell her she does not need a man. The government tells her she does not need a man. Until she hears her biological clock loudly ticking in her ears, she does not think she needs a man. Well for the last 40 years, women have been making their bed and now they are starting to get all worried that men don't want to sleep in it.

You want to change this? Well then change it. Stop watching shows that denigrate men. Stop supporting magazines that denigrate men. Stop electing official that denigrate men. Stop hanging around with women that denigrate men. When men start to feel like they are actually liked by women again and are actually respected by women again, they will start wanting to marry women again.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling
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#5

All the single ladies(Atlantic article)

I haven't read all of it, but something struck me : "post-Boomer ideology that values emotional fulfillment above all else"

I find that's not only in feminism, but in general culture, that instant fun is now more important than discipline, commitment, hard work, values and principles...

Fucking hippies who lived in a bubble, learned nothing about life, and poisoined us all with their faulty ideologies...
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#6

All the single ladies(Atlantic article)

Quote: (01-13-2013 01:46 PM)Pappy Wrote:  

I haven't read all of it, but something struck me : "post-Boomer ideology that values emotional fulfillment above all else"

I find that's not only in feminism, but in general culture, that instant fun is now more important than discipline, commitment, hard work, values and principles...

Fucking hippies who lived in a bubble, learned nothing about life, and poisoined us all with their faulty ideologies...


Hippies didnt poison you with faulty ideologies ...... the creators of the faulty ideologies and propagators of them are ....

Gloria Steinem was funded by the CIA ............look it up.

Moist of the feminist movement and associated ideolgoies and policies where designed and sponsored by Rockefeller funded programs and foundations and institutes ......
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#7

All the single ladies(Atlantic article)

some interesting comments there, nice read, slowly people are waking up, men especially.

Don't forget to check out my latest post on Return of Kings - 6 Things Indian Guys Need To Understand About Game

Desi Casanova
The 3 Bromigos
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