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What Men Want
“[Sex is] a contest to see who cares less, and guys win a lot at caring less,” Amanda says.
A brutal Vanity Fair column about the instant hookup world of Tinder shows one side of what men want and what they don’t. And it’s neither pretty nor surprising.
“When it’s so easy, when it’s so available to you,” Brian says intensely, “… it’s very hard to contain yourself.”
“I don’t want [a relationship],” says Nick. “I don’t want to have to deal with all that—stuff.”
“You can’t be selfish in a relationship,” Brian says. “It feels good just to do what I want.”
In the piece, the author asked young women what percent of young men they thought were in it just for the sex “without any intention of having a relationship with them or perhaps even walking them to the door.”
“One hundred percent,” said Meredith, 20, a sophomore at Bellarmine University in Louisville.
“No, like 90 percent,” said Ashley. “I’m hoping to find the 10 percent somewhere. But every boy I’ve ever met is [just out for sex].”
I don’t presume I know what women want, but it doesn’t seem to be this:
“… it really is kind of destroying females’ self-images,” says Fallon.
“It’s body first, personality second,” says Stephanie.
“Honestly, I feel like the body doesn’t even matter to them as long as you’re willing,” says Reese. “It’s that bad.”
“But if you say any of this out loud, it’s like you’re weak, you’re not independent, you somehow missed the whole memo about third-wave feminism,” says Amanda.
The post had me on the verge of tears for the pain of the women and for the emptiness of the men. We all know –or always knew, until recently — what men want on a primal level. That’s how we were built. But we can grow into what we’re meant to become.
Fortunately, Mona Charen’s Manliness: An Unsung Trait of the Train Heroes saved me from despair over the matter. It gives a far more inspiring view of what men could and should be, and what many men are.
Charen started from the premise that, by nature, men are rambunctious and have violent tendencies, but that Judeo-Christian culture has taught them how to channel their urges into virtuous expression. In contrast, the Vanity Fair article started from the premise that, by nature, men were like women, but the “cultural milieu” had made men pathetic jerks. That all would be good if we weren’t “censured by church or state.” “In a perfect world, we’d all have sex with whomever we want” and we wouldn’t have to worry about jealousy, sexism, or “the still-flickering chance that somebody might fall in love.”
This being Ricochet, the comments section on Charen’s piece was equal to the article. The outpouring of appreciation from men showed what they really crave but can rarely find:
- A woman praising masculinity. You can see this reaction whenever women praise men and masculinity.
- An inspiring model of who men should be. A model that celebrates masculinity in particular and gender differences in general, instead of denying and demonizing them.
Finding sexual excitement is quite easy today; far too easy. What’s hard, and infinitely more valued, is finding affirmation that women want us to complement them. That they see us not as broken women, but as their other half, appreciated both for our similarities and our differences. Men and women can give each other what they want, and what they need.
Or they can use Tinder.
Published in General
And what Rousseau taught us is that barbarians are free and noble.
I think the more women are foisted by their own Feminist Petard the better off our civilization will be in the end.
On the other hand this whole Tinder sexual buffet the article describes seems to be localized in rather large cities and collage areas. I read the article but now I can’t recall of any of the guys and girls interviewed resided in less urban environments. Perhaps the article as is the liberal want is navel gazing into a problem that is quite isolated in a tight urban professional setting that most people don’t belong to. These are the problems of rich yuppie students and business professionals, not the average American.
I’m the parent of three attractive twenty somethings who did not find significant others in college — for many reasons (the imbalance mentioned above in the male/female ratio of college attendance is definitely problematic). Tinder is everywhere — urban centers, suburbs and the exurbs. Men no longer seem to want to man up and ask a young woman out in person. It’s easier to swipe. I am only now understanding the horror show that is the “dating” (ha) scene after college for young women who wish to hold themselves to some moral standards.
My guess is that it’ll get better for them. That kind of thing was pretty normal among my peers after graduation but — 12 years later — my Facebook feed is a steady stream of engagement notices, wedding pictures, sonograms*, and toddler pix.
* In that order.
I advise you two take your sarcasm detectors into the shop.
Be careful in attributing that to all of the left. “Socialism or Barbarism” is a concept popular among the hard left.
Ah. Monasteries don’t have that incentive and are nonetheless civilized. Got it now.
“Oh, ho, ho, irony! Oh, no, no, we don’t get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony’s not really a, a high priority. We haven’t had any irony here since about, uh, ’83, when I was the only practitioner of it. And I stopped because I was tired of being stared at” — Steve Martin in Roxanne
It’s cool. Misinterpretation is easy on the internet.
What’s that supposed to mean?
It is good. Except for the idiotic section on pesticides.
Yeah, but I don’t think the argument is that marriage is the only incentive or process for civilizing men. It’s a big one, to be sure, but others exist too – like religion.
Spoken like a true Wingman.
This is the true, secret appeal of these dating apps: no wingman necessary; no complaints about grenade duty later.
I am among the first to criticize the 1960s for the decline in traditional morality, much of which was driven by left-wing ideology. But I recognize that several of the basic facts which supported that traditional morality have changed. Historically, the facts were:
Those are all good points, Arizona P. Right wing documentarian Ann McElhinney likes to say that the washing machine liberated women more than the pill and I think both did more for women’s progress than the suffragettes. Strangely enough, lefty economist Ha Joon Chang agrees and devotes a chapter of his book, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, to the subject.
And then the Whoops, Honey, I’m pregnant strategy usually follows within 6 months.