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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25630 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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The presumption in Western courts has long been shared custody. I think MRAs have always had some reasonable points on this issue, especially with courts willing to believe mothers over fathers on some questions. But in general, many complaints about ‘divorce rape’ happen when the father understands that he can’t reasonable split weekday custody with the mother (almost always because he works full-time) and so voluntarily relinquishes this possibility, and then resents the fact that his ex-wife or baby momma is the homemaker (part or full time) on his dime.

Also, while payments are often a substantial part of a poorer man’s income, the only times they’re “ridiculously” high (often an MRA complaint on this issue) is in a handful of cases a year where super rich people get divorced, which is very far away from most divorces, concentrated as they always are among people who are poorer and have fewer resources.

In general, men ‘benefit’ more from divorce than women because a single dad’s romantic market value is much higher than a single mom’s. Single mothers almost always have to ‘date down’, often much older men who are divorced with kids of their own. Single dads - provided they’re young-ish and otherwise somewhat attractive - can often find a childless woman a second time.

There is obviously the risk of that kind of scenario, but I don’t think it considers (as @100ProofTollBooth says) the fact that divorce is pretty much never in a woman’s interest unless (a) her husband is untenably abusive such that being much poorer is worth escaping his grasp, (b) the couple is extraordinarily rich to the point that a settlement will allow her both ‘freedom’ and wealth or (c) the woman in question is still young enough, pretty enough and childless enough to roll the dice again and find a better partner.

A woman over 30, certainly over 35 with kids is pretty much never getting a ‘good deal’ in a divorce unless she married very, very well the first time. I don’t know why this isn’t repeated more in these discussions, men will gladly discuss how they would never date a single mother and how women lose value as their looks fade but then claim some 37 year old woman divorcing her average husband is some great financial coup on behalf of the wife.

In “real life”, she’s likely to either remain single for a long time or remarry to a man far below (in that he’s older, uglier, poorer etc) what she could have got had she remained single the whole time (even at 37). Meanwhile, her 37 year old ex-husband, provided he’s OK looking and gainfully employed, can likely find a 30-34 year old probably-childless woman to start a second family with, or decide not to have more kids and date most of the same kind of people he’d have if he’d never married.

You are correct that divorce is almost never in a woman's best interests. That doesn't mean it is in the man's, either. Women suffer romantically (because a single mother in her 30s will never be able to get as good of a husband as a childless woman in her 20s, if she can get another husband at all) while men suffer materially (because, as the primary bread winner, he is the one that gets hit with the alimony, child support, etc.). It's mutually assured destruction.

That doesn't change the fact that women are responsible for the vast majority of divorces, either initiating them outright or making their husband's life hell until he files for one. It is just evidence that women cannot be trusted to make their own sexual choices. Which is precisely why they were not allowed to until the sexual revolution.

From "The False Life Plan" by the Dreaded Jim:

Consider the reality show star Kate Gosselin, woman has eight children by a decent, reasonably attractive husband, who loves her and loves his children. Acts like a complete shrew towards the only man who will ever love her and her children. Ditches him. Is shocked to discover that no other male wants a woman past her prime and encumbered with eight children.

Kate Gosselin was videotaped continually treating her husband like dirt, as the man she reluctantly settled for seeing as all her preferred choices would not return her phone calls.

She then divorced him, depriving him of his much loved children, depriving her eight children of a much needed father, and herself of a much needed and entirely irreplaceable husband.

And I have seen a similar dynamic in every divorce that I have observed, though of course with considerably fewer children. In every divorce that I have observed the wife was utterly and spectacularly out of contact with marriage market realities. The result of the divorce is that the man, who very much did not want the divorce, was much better off, free of a hateful and unfaithful shrew, and the wife was very much worse off. As the wife goggles fell from his eyes, he usually found a considerably younger replacement.

At the age of thirty eight, with eight children and a notorious shrew, Kate Gosselin’s chances of marrying even a homeless obese seventy year old alcoholic are about equal to her chances of being kidnapped by terrorists and becoming the wife of the sultan, but she specifically requires her new husband to be rich, six foot tall, physically fit, and childless. (Her previous husband was not rich, not six foot tall, and only ordinarily fit, which is presumably why she divorced him.)

Meanwhile her husband, Jon Gosselin, the father of her children, having lost the wife goggles, promptly got a hot twenty two year old girlfriend to replace his aging thirty eight year old wife, and if the girlfriend is lucky, might marry her. But then, having been burned once, maybe not.

The typical marriage is Kate Gosselin and Jon Gosselin: The wife has a hugely inflated idea of her marriage market value (based on her F-buddy market value when she was considerably younger) and this poisons the marriage.

Now theoretically, if a woman is chaste, men will only approach her that are appropriate to her marriage market value, and she will avoid getting an inflated perception of her value, but no man believes that a chaste women is likely to remain chaste, because, they are not likely to remain chaste. So a woman faces a storm of approaches that would never happen if the boys had to ask her dad before approaching her, and if her dad said yes, they would get not a date with the opportunity of physical contact, but merely the opportunity to court her for marriage. These approaches lead Kate Gosselin to believe that she is entitled to marry a six foot tall physically fit millionaire, and that life, her husband, and the male dominated society is being terribly unfair to her in not giving her what she is entitled to have.

or making their husband's life hell until he files for one.

I don't think this works as well as the women think it does; men have memes about this (ball and chain) that aren't meaningfully replicated across the gender boundary. Head-crushing (by men) and heel-striking (by women) behavior is the baseline for Biblical gender relations within the context of a marriage, after all.

Head-crushing (by men) and heel-striking (by women) behavior is the baseline for Biblical gender relations within the context of a marriage, after all.

Could you elaborate? I've never heard of "you shall crush his head, he shall strike your heel" claimed as having anything to do with gender relations, given that the trade is between man and serpent. Compare the curses directed at men and women respectively from the same passage: men will suffer toil, women will suffer pain in childbirth.

Huh, must have conflated the two in memory. (It still seems to me to be the main failure mode of how both genders handle being nasty in relationships, though.)

Aww nuts. I thought I was about to discover a neat rabbit-hole of esoteric scriptural interpretation. Oh well...

Nah, the spiciest thing from me you're likely to get is the claim that 1 Corinthians 8 is... probably not only referring to idol food.

But that's slow-pitch as far as interpretations go, I'm pretty sure everyone already knows that anyway (even if only to abuse it because you want to completely disregard what the previous chapter says... and then create a bunch of fallout for being completely un-self-aware about what doing it does and/or creating a crisis of faith for yourself due to your inability to back up your actions), and it's... well, not unusual, but somewhat remarkable that it's a conclusion that falls out of the significantly more general "should social systems that are designed for the average person still let you flip the safety off, and if you do that, when should you do that, how should you talk/how public should you be about the choices you're making, and why?" discussions that are half of what anyone around here talks about these days anyway.

Maybe I'll have to come up with something more esoteric when I misremember something else about scripture and gender later; too bad that whenever I'm thinking about this it's not for very nice reasons.

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