Remember when a woman needed a man like a fish needed a bicycle? What an ironic twist- turns out the bicycle doesn’t need or want the fish! What a blow to the female ego! No wonder talk of a marriage strike infuriates women. Of course, that old saying went out of fashion about the same time that Gloria Steinem got married…
The problem with feminist analysis of marriage is that they set about trying to convince themselves that women were somehow being shortchanged in marraige; therefore, they decided to “even the field” by pushing for more and more draconian, anti-male legislation. When men reacted, quite logically, by turning away from marriage or commitment, the response of feminists has been to turn to that old standby, male bashing (AKA the Peter Pan syndrome). If men don’t want to marry, why by god there must be something wrong with men! Don’t they know how lucky they are to have a woman willing to live with them…?? They must be immature, or anti-woman, or suffer from some kind of pathology…
As the men posting here have shown, however, men are just overcoming what has been, for generations, a form of female oppression. Men don’t need marriage- it is, was, and always will be, a social device for controlling men and providing for women and children. Women benefit from having a man who is forced, by law, to support her (the opposite is not true) and her children. Once he’s done the job of insemination, then he can be legally discarded, if the occasion arises. The problem for women, though, is that if another man isn’t available, they find themselves raising children without the benefit of male resources. Furthermore, women need emotional connection more than men, and need sex just as much (in spite of our gender bias in this regard). So feminism has set women up to be the ultimate losers in this uneven competition, and the new generation of men are the ironic beneficiaries of feminist social enginering! The real backlash against feminism isn’t going to come from men- it’ll come when women realize that they’ve been conned out of what is most important to their emotional well being- men- by other women who were pushing an anti male agenda.
