Summary: The results of fourth wave feminism begin to appear. Marriage is dying, people are living isolated lonely lives. The stress on America society will be immense as these trends continue.
“The sexual revolution, however, wanted men and women to get together bodily, while feminism wanted them to be able easily to get along separately.”
— Allan Bloom in Closing of the American Mind (1987). Feminism won.
Less sex in the new age
Three waves of feminism have restructured gender relations in the US, with changes whose effects yet to be seen. Especially fourth wave feminism, women’s pursuit of dominance over men. Marriage rates are falling for all ages. Cohabitation rates have risen, but not enough to offset the decline. Since most sex occurs in these relationships, people are having less sex. See the data. Such as this graphic from “Trends in the Prevalence of Sexual Behaviors: 1991-2017” by the CDC (click to enlarge.)
It is not just teens. For more of the same, but more disturbing, see “Trends and Patterns of Sexual Behaviors Among Adolescents and Adults Aged 14 to 59 Years, United States” by Gui Liu et al. in Sexually Transmitted Diseases, January 2015 “The sexual behavior trends shown in our analyses are similar to those found in other high-income countries such as the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden.”
Journalists see the story, but don’t understand
A decline in marriage rates and decrease in sexual activity sounds like big news. It is not, at least to American journalists. But some women have reported it, albeit with a feminist spins.
- “Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?” by Kate Julian in The Atlantic, December 2018 – “Despite the easing of taboos and the rise of hookup apps, Americans are in the midst of a sex recession.”
- “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” by Jean Twenge in The Atlantic, September 2017 – “More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis.”
The writers and most of the researchers are women. Men avoid this hot zone, which offers the potential for career death by saying something deemed sexist. The women writers speak of “people” and “teens”, but they quote almost exclusively women – and discuss (with exceptions) only women’s perspectives.
This blinkered viewpoint goes further. The women, of course, don’t consider that these trends might be caused by changes in women’s behavior. For example, the number of close relationships between men and women might have declined due to a combination of obesity, careerism (women out of the dating game), and unleashed hypergamy for the remnant who are in the game (as they seek only the top 10% or 20% of men.
Buried deep in Julian’s article, an admission by women about one reason there are fewer relationships.
“I mentioned to several of the people I interviewed for this piece that I’d met my husband in an elevator, in 2001. …I was fascinated by the extent to which this prompted other women to sigh and say that they’d just love to meet someone that way. And yet quite a few of them suggested that if a random guy started talking to them in an elevator, they would be weirded out. ‘Creeper! Get away from me,’ one woman imagined thinking. ‘Anytime we’re in silence, we look at our phones,” explained her friend, nodding.’”
This did not arouse any suspicion in Julian that changes in women’s behavior might explain much of the data she reports.
Why so many people are alone
Surveys, such as this by YouGov, show that large numbers of women consider normal introductory behavior to be sexual harassment. Twenty-eight percent of young women (age 18 to 24) consider paying her a complement to be harassment; twenty-eight percent consider winking at her to be harassment. Forty-eight consider placing your hand on a woman’s lower back to be harassment. Young men deal with young women, aware that a large fraction are primed to see them as predators.
Men that show an interest in young women are often told by women that this is “pervy”, although marriages with the husband 7 to 10 years older than the wife was once commonplace. Men physically attracted by girls in the late teens – post-pubescent girls with their physical sexual cues at peak levels – are called often called “perverts.” These are all common tropes in films and TV shows, the stage on which we see the great and wise of Hollywood instruct us on proper behavior. For example, on NCIS Los Angeles Kensi often describes Deeks as a pervert for looking at or chasing women.
Now the #meToo movement is further broadening the definition of harassment, narrowing the range of acceptable approaches by men to women (sometimes requiring telepathy, since men must know in advance how women will respond). MeToo allows women to re-categorize relationships weeks, months, or even years later. Often in strange ways, such accusations by co-eds that a guy “forced” her to drink too much in a restaurant. Girls’ agency comes and goes, as needed by her.
Unlike communism, this experiment will work. Trust us!
Conclusions
We are like monkeys in the control room of a nuclear power plant, spinning the dials. We are confident that no testing or experimentation is required. Fourth wave feminism is a movement to make normal behavior into misbehavior, alienating us from our natures. It will inflect damage to society on a scale we cannot imagine today. The shift to a post-marriage – even post-relationship society – has just begun.
Bet on a lot more loneliness in America, as fewer people bond together. Since the family is the primary tie of people to society, bet a much more alienation. Since the family motivates men to work hard, expect more dropouts (the “missing men” in the job stats). Since relationships and family provide meaning to many people’s live, bet on much more use of drugs – and more deaths from drug overdoses.
We are drifting thoughtlessly to a dark future for America. But we can still change.
“It leads to the World made by Hand,
Institutions shattered, but delusions too.
Then the re-build, based on reality not wishes.”— James Howard Kunstler, novelist and social critic. See Wikipedia and his website. Private communication, posted with his permission.