Men and Women: Should We Just Call the Whole Thing Off?

Marriage is in decline. This fact is by now so familiar to conservatives that they may be tempted to gloss over an interesting shift in the manner of marriage’s decline. Thirty years ago, Americans were getting married but not staying that way. Today divorce rates are down but wedding bells are also in less demand. Growing numbers of young people are simply staying single. There’s evidence they’re becoming less interested even in casual sex.

Are men and women giving up on each other? It’s starting to feel that way. In the vitriol of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, the #MeToo movement, and our ongoing discussions of “incels,” “NEETs,” and absent fathers, we see rising levels of frustration and rage, often directed indiscriminately from one sex towards the other. Making relationships work has always been a challenge—even casual human interactions can sometimes be a challenge. So what if people decide that it’s just not worth it anymore?

In the vitriol of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, the #MeToo movement, and our ongoing discussions of “incels,” “NEETs,” and absent fathers, we see rising levels of frustration and rage, often directed indiscriminately from one sex towards the other.

A few years back, I became aware of that countercultural strain of identity politics known as the “men’s rights movement.” I first encountered it on social media, of course, and in a quest to grasp its red-pilled logic, I spent some time wandering the fever swamps of male grievance, noting the many interesting parallels between virulent masculinism and the more radical strains of feminism. It added an interesting layer to my perspective on our ongoing war of sexes.

It’s well worth noting that both masculinism and feminism, at least in their more extreme forms, are fundamentally materialist in their logic. Feminism draws regularly on Marxist ideologies, reducing complex social relations to an endless war of classes vying for power. For masculinists, sociobiology is the more defining influence, as huge swaths of culture and custom are reduced to mere expressions of the Darwinian imperative to procreate. It all makes sense, on reflection. Aggrieved women, resenting the natural vulnerability of their bodies, are attracted to political theories that call for the leveling of power disparities. Aggrieved men, by contrast, hope to find in the male body a kind of warrant for dominance, which is bestowed by biology and ostensibly crucial to the survival of the species. Peeling back the layers, it seems that gender crusaders of both types are intensely fixated on brute corporeal realities: the strength of man and the comparative neediness of woman.

Continue reading this essay at The American Conservative . . . .