It’s Not Your Imagination, Single Women: There Literally Aren’t Enough Men Out There – Re: Man Shortage – Follow Up Interview
The number of sexist men leaving comments below the page linked to below is breath taking.
Despite the fact the page is simply saying it’s a numbers game – there are more single women than men (especially in regards to college education) – there is no hatred of men going on in the article, but many of the male commentators leaving remarks below the page are complaining about how men have things so tough in society, they are complaining about feminism.
However, there is some honest, yet very fair, criticism of male behavior in the interview, as pertaining to men who realize women out-number them, so they treat women like trash – they will “play the field” and date ten women at once, or date one woman, use her, treat her like dirt, then dump her, to move on to another woman.
And that is terrible behavior. I believe the interviewer is correct to bring that point up. Pointing out that some men treat women like objects or like trash is not misandry. It’s honest. It’s merely pointing out reality.
The author says college educated women who desire marriage should consider marrying non-college educated men, rather than snubbing them, which is a rather “pro man” argument to make.
In spite of all this, a number of sexist Nimrods (men) in the comments section, who have chips on their shoulders against women, are complaining about feminism and other irrelevant issues. Several of them admit to being single. With lousy attitudes against women like theirs, it’s no wonder to me why such men are single.
Sept 26, 2015
Not long after he turned 30, the writer Jon Birger realized he and his wife knew a lot of women like that. The couple didn’t have a lot of single male friends left, but the many single women they knew all seemed to be buyers stuck in a seller’s market.
…This got Birger, a former economics writer for Fortune and Money, thinking: How could a man of that age be so cavalier about casting aside such an amazing woman? And why do we all have similar stories of incredible female friends trapped for years in dating hell? Why are there so many great single women? Where are all the great single men?
..Using his background in economics and statistics, Birger sought out an answer. The result is his new book, Date-onomics: How Dating Became a Lopsided Numbers Game, a clever read with a sobering conclusion: There simply aren’t enough college-educated men to go around. For every four college-educated women in my generation, there are three college-educated men. The result? What Birger calls a “musical chairs” of the heart: As the men pair off with partners, unpartnered straight women are left with fewer and fewer options—and millions of them are eventually left with no options at all.
I sat down for a long talk with Birger and found out why boys aren’t graduating from college, why your best friend is single, and why more women should consider moving to Silicon Valley.
…So, where are all the men?
I mean they exist, they’re just not going to college. This isn’t China or India where they have a man-made gender imbalance because of all sorts of horrendous things. [Men are] out there, they’re just not going to college. Last year about 35 percent more women than men graduated from college.
…Do you think that the attitude of men in their 30s and 40s who don’t feel the need to settle down can be chalked up purely to the way the deck is stacked in their favor?
The one thing I never totally decided on was how much of this is conscious versus subconscious. So when a young woman or a young man gets to a school [where there are a lot] more women than men, and there’s this highly intense hook-up culture, is it, “Well, there are three of us for every two of them, I’m going to change my behavior as a result,” or is it a “when in Rome” kind of thing?
Or is just that attitudes towards marriage are changing
Well, it’s a chicken-and-egg thing. If marriage is harder to come by, do you seek it less? I mean, the marriage rate for women in Silicon Valley is much higher than New York’s. And the divorce rate’s lower too.
..What else did you find out about divorce?
It seems obvious that if women are in short supply then you’re going to try harder to hold on to [your wife]. There’s actually a lot of social science [research] on sex ratios that grows out of animal behavior and zoology.
There’s a study in the book I reference—what researchers will do is look at nominally monogamous species.
They’ll [mess] around with the sex ratios in a control population and take the ratio from 5:5 to six males for every four females to start. What they found is that the male desertion rate, once they made the population overly male, declined from 22 percent to 11 percent.
Is there any silver lining to this for women?
There has been some reaction from women who found [the book] life-affirming, because they realize it’s not them. They had been blaming themselves for their lack of success [in the dating world], and this was kind of assuring in some way.
It’s hugely reassuring, I think.
But there are others who find it massively depressing.
How do you comfort your single friends—”Oh, you’ll find someone”—when statistically, many of them won’t unless they lower their standards?
See, I hate the “lower your standards thing,” because I’m always thinking about my friend [who married a janitor] and I don’t view [their marriage] as “lowering your standards.” I view this as making a different kind of choice.
And as an older married guy, I also have something else to add: All marriage involves compromise. You’ll learn this.
Sometimes the fun part of marriage is working through the compromise and figuring out your comfort zones.
So the “lowering your standards” thing ekes me a little bit—if lowering your standards means marrying an asshole, I’m with you. But if it means [marrying someone who] makes $60,000 instead of $600,000 I’m resisting that.
More and more women are deciding to live independent lives and not get married. Could that trend actually be the result of there just not being enough men?
It’s very important to understand that I am not endorsing marriage. I am not endorsing monogamy. I think people can lead fulfilled lives without being married
..Are there any societies where men outnumber women, or where women have the power that men have in America?
China. There was a semi-recent story in Bloomberg, and it quoted a young couple who were about to start having a family. The dad said, “Oh, I hope I have a girl, having a boy is just too expensive.” Because in the middle-upper class in China, it’s now accepted that in order to be marriageable a young man has to own his own apartment. In Shanghai, that could be $300,000 to $400,000, and he has to own a car, too. This creates pressure not only on the young man but on the family, to be able to afford to help him. It’s a reverse dowry, essentially.
The above is sort of a follow up to stories such as these:
(Link): How the Dating Scene Became Stacked Against Women
(Link): Are Single Mormon Women “Screwed”? (from RNS – applicable to Christianity)
Related Posts:
(Link): Men with ‘Golden Penis Syndrome’ Are Ruining Sex and Dating for Women
(Link): Man / Husband Shortage in Hong Kong – just like in American Christian circles
(Link): What Christians Really Think About the Church’s Relationship Advice by Anna Broadway
(Link): China’s Brutal One-Child Policy Ruins Men’s Marriage Prospects, Resulting in Human Trafficking
(Link): Does God Require Singles to Be Perfect Before He Will Send Them a Spouse
(Link): Following the Usual Advice Won’t Get You Dates or Married – Even Celebrities Have A Hard Time
(Link): Depressing Testimony: “I Was A Stripper but Jesus Sent Me A Great Christian Husband”
(Link): Five Things Single Women Hate to Hear
(Link): List of Christian Singlehood Annoyances, Part 1
(Link): Single woman frustrated in a religious community (letter to advice columnist)
(Link): Topics Preachers Should or Shouldn’t Mention When Discussing Singlehood
(Link): Lies The Church Tells Single Women (by Sue Bohlin)
(Link): Sick of Being Single / I Am So Sick and Tired of Being Single Alone Unmarried Lonely
(Link): Is Interfaith Marriage Always Wrong, Given that the Bible Teaches Us Not to Be ‘Unequally Yoked’?
(Link): Forget About Being ‘Equally Yoked’ – Article: ‘My Abusive ‘Christian’ Marriage’
(Link): The Nauseating Push by Evangelicals for Early Marriage
Christian Pundit 