Daddy Issues Part I: Sexless Male Apprentice and the Law of Unintended Consequences
We have a crisis of men and masculinity. How much of this ties in with the plunge in happiness of women?
Perhaps no concept more clearly illustrates the limitations of mankind than the law of unintended consequences. There are infinite examples of people and governments not being able to fully comprehend and foresee the consequences of our individual or collective actions. In a nutshell, the law of unintended consequences warns about outcomes—typically negative—that are unforeseen based on actions taken that are often done with the best of intentions.
Health care mandates are a perfect example, which lead to all sorts of unintended consequences, some of which turn out to be devastating. We are very quickly learning this lesson from the COVID era, as more and more evidence comes out regarding the damage lockdowns had on our economy, relationships, and personal health, on top of not actually being able to stop the spread. Still, it is important to highlight that many unintended consequences are predicted by some people, but often these contrarians are shunned. The great danger of relying solely on once-size-fits all lockdowns and vaccinations to address COVID was in fact painfully obvious to many outsiders from the very beginning, but that is the focus for another article.
The sexes and policies relating to the interactions between men and women is another example ripe with unintended consequences. For several decades, our society has engaged in the very noble and important cause of equal rights for women. Nevertheless, at a time in America that statistics show women in general have never had more power in the workplace, in their own homes, and in terms of monetary earning power, the general happiness level of women has been on the decline despite these societal advancements. This is especially true for liberal women, precisely the group that has seen the biggest gains in areas such as college education, income growth, and workplace status. Obviously, there is a need to be careful here in drawing absolute conclusions. There is a wide variety of reasons why we are seeing a general decline in happiness in our society. Still, mainstream surveying is clearly showing that liberal women are the least happy group in America by a wide margin, with a shockingly high percentage of self-identified liberal women saying they are unhappy.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14398225/liberal-woman-happy-lonely-america-survey.html
https://www.americansurveycenter.org/newsletter/the-despair-of-young-liberal-women/
How could this be? There is too much to discuss in one article (and I need to provide the obligatory statement that I am not a trained professional in psychology or related field), but to try and provide part of a foundation, one explanation is that maybe, just maybe, men and women need each other more than the typical militant and rigid viewpoint espoused in mainstream establishment thought. Perhaps there is a connection between the crisis of men and the decline in importance given to family, with the plunge in the general happiness level of women.
One eye-opening trend that has recently taken hold in society is a significant shift in sexual activity. Via one high-profile survey highlighted in the below chart, during just the ten-year period between 2008 and 2018, the number of men between the ages of 18 and 30 that reported have zero sex over the past year increased from around 10% to 28%. This explosion in the number of sexless men has resulted in a sudden gap of 10% between men and women, with 18% of women in 2018 reporting no sexual activity.
This chart is starting to get a bit dated, and it appears the trend has since reversed somewhat; nevertheless, this was a trend widely reported on and clearly has a major impact on society.
What does this mean? Well, the ironic storyline and the harsh truth is that survey after survey indicates that many women admit they find men who make less money than they do to be less desirable. With significant developments in recent years such as women now far outpacing men in college enrollment and suddenly we now have a huge segment of young men that are being shunned and declared undesirable by women, as highlighted by the chart. At the same time, a smaller share of men at the top have never had it better in terms of available sexual partners. Therefore, as the chart simply indicates but other studies also highlight, there has been a surge in women who both knowingly and unknowingly share a man sexually with other women. Talk about an unintended consequence of increasing women’s rights!
Further, other study findings seem to indicate a connection between the push toward freedom and independence and away from dependence and family, with this general decline in happiness for women, particularly self-identified liberal women.
As always, the message is the need to find a balance. The establishment often is horrendous at pushing a very black and white narrative. Yes, society should strive to provide women with the ability to seek more independence and freedom from constraints, including financial; however, this can and needs to be done in a way that doesn’t wage war on the concept of traditional family values and not via a false zero-sum damaging viewpoint that this equality push requires an attack on men, specifically, traditional male traits. A clear narrative in the mainstream is this push to create weak men. Sorry, but weakness and softness is not a desirable trait for men and only leads to more troubles for women. Ignore that message from the mainstream. Does that mean we should nurture a bunch of asshole alpha-male wannabe’s running around? Certainly not, but there are many degrees and spectrums of men between the extremes of weak and soft on the one side vs. a self-centered wannabe tough-guy alpha-male type on the other side. The world could use many more fully secure with themselves, nonconforming, courageous, and responsible strong male types that strive to fight for their family, themselves, women, and their communities.
One takeaway via this article is that in so many areas we just need to let things naturally progress and stop trying to dictate trends and human behavior so much. It almost always leads to blowback and all sorts of negative distortions. Much of this leads to the general idea of trust: trust in people and trust that things will progress for the better if allowed to. Still, there are, of course, instances where social policies can make sense, but a principal rule I have in life is the simpler the better. The less complex the rule and goal the better. Getting extremely specific and dogmatic on societal goals is never a wise path, as it leads to too many unknown reactions.
In the end, all the social engineering our society has tried to engage in has helped hide a simple, fundamental truth: we need each other. Men and women need each other and the constant bashing of traditional men in the mainstream is ultimately bad for women as well. Once again, the story of men vs. women in the mainstream is yet another endless example of those in power trying to divide people, to the detriment of both men and women. The real war is not between men and women, the real war is the majority vs. a relatively tiny group manipulating the emotions of people in order to maintain power. These themes will be explored further in the next article.
Part two of this series on the crisis of men coming soon: Daddy Issues Part II: The Equality Ruse