Cries of the men’s rights movement

I’m not one hundred percent sure what to say about all this. There’s surely a lot to learn about men from this, just as sociological data. I’m not sure that this is the most eloquent articulation of the position. It’s more of a primal cry. I’ll just assume that there is something worth hearing and understanding in it, just as I assume that there’s something worth hearing and understanding in women’s perspectives, including feminism.
It’s one of the great unsung tragedies that post-second wave feminism presided over the death of marriage as an institution, fundamentally harming so many women and reducing their power and position in the world, ironically, all in the name of increasing it. More and more men, upon noticing that women want to be independent of them, also started to wonder if maybe they could be independent of their need for women. And women and technology have (partly) solved that problem for men, as it’s been solved for women, by making sex more easily available for men just as independent provision is more easily available for women.
The value of men as providers and protectors has dropped, and substitute structures have been developed (government and law being big ones), so women don’t need to directly rely on men for those contributions so much any more. And it’s perfectly reasonable to want to seize the means for yourself. Men weren’t always great at it, to put it mildly, but they did work themselves to death quite a bit and die in defense of their families a lot, so you also shouldn’t completely discount their attempts. But they’ve been surpassed by the great modern edifices of the state like Medicare, social services, living assistance, law enforcement, welfare, public education, and other forms of public benefit. You don’t need to marry a man. Modern socieity, technology, and the government can help secure whatever you need and help you provide for yourself. Your bases are covered, so husbands can become a luxury, not a necessity.
Men have also, of late, been developing substitutes for women, particularly for wives. Women face technological competition. Men can buy a lot of the goods that women used to provide, in terms of care and production of all the small and ubiquitous items of daily comfort and craft and creative beauty. We’ve even got technological competitors for intimacy and sex. We’ve got porn, companion apps, robots, counseling, even hugging services. (And if none of that works, there’s always drugs, alcohol, and jail.)
Porn, of course, is the big one. The sex drive is pretty hard to ignore and naturally drives men toward women and out of their isolation and self-sufficiency, and makes them invest in development of themselves and the environment to make it pleasing and acceptable for women. Now, why bother? Sex is cheap. I don’t need to live or die for that, I’ve got it right here in my pocket. Maybe porn is less tangible, but it’s got more variety and flexibility and less risk and demands so much less. It’s got a competitive pitch. We can probably still get the real thing occasionally, and if we can’t, they’re working on a substitute for that too.
Understandably, we all resent needing one another. We would much rather not, and just have everything we want without being made dependent on or beholden to someone else. We want to be free. And now that more women agree with lots of men that marriage is a kind of undesirable slavery, then why have it at all? Let government and technology pick up the tab for whatever it might cost us.
I don’t really side with men or women on this issue. I don’t think it’s that simple. And I completely understand why men and women desire to be independent of each other. And why they resent paying the price of taking on a role that really costs you a lot and restricts you a lot, just so you can get some dubious benefit back from the other sex. People want to know if there is an alternative where we don’t need each other. Where we are complete on our own and don’t need to leave our security to pursue relationships except as a cherry on top of a self-sufficiency we already possess. That’s the dream. And I’m sympathetic to it. Looking to another person, especially a person of the other sex who is so different and difficult, to meet your needs is close to insanity. And clearly it won’t work out for everyone.
But still, it seems like the end result isn’t really making men or women happier. Maybe this is all a natural consequence of technology and social advancement making that devil’s bargain less and less necessary and desirable. Maybe men are just paying the price for failing to properly honor and value and love their wives, as they were commanded to in the foundational moral documents of Western society.
One thing I don’t really agree with (some members of) the men’s movement about, is that I don’t think it’s really subservience men want. I don’t even think they’re right about themselves in thinking that’s what they want from women. What they want is honor. Service is a two-way and entirely equal street. But men particularly want honor. They’re willing to trade their safety and strength and even lives in the most extreme and crazy ways for the jewel of being assigned a special status and value by women (and other men).

Men are very competitive, and that competition stems from a kind of vulnerability. Their position, their value, their status is fundamentally insecure. They have to fight for it. Genetically, this is reflected in the vastly smaller number of male ancestors you have. Not everyone reproduces, only a fraction of women are carried forward genetically to become future generations, and only half of that number of men are carried forward. So men are biologically insecure, and seek to solve that insecurity through competition for honor
Men want women to make them feel secure. Secure in their status. That they have been chosen, that they are honored. That their competition has succeeded and they have won a position. And no one can confer that honor like a wife can. A wife can make the smallest man a king. Men will work and slave and suffer and sacrifice and die for that honor. It’s a resource worth securing. It’s powerful.
This is a deep need men have, that could be used to take them out of themselves and make them useful and productive. And they’re not great at expressing or even really understanding that need and that vulnerability. But it’s what I hear here, behind the talk of so many men. It also stands behind their resentment and despondency, their depression and pathology. Men are needy and insecure. Women are needy and insecure too. We all are, we’re human. We’re pathetic little tiny, incomplete, struggling creatures. Our insufficiency may manifest differently, but we all have it. And we need one another. I don’t think you’ll solve the problems of the human race by trying to ignore or eradicate that need. That will only drive the two halves of humanity further apart. And we need them both.
Our species is fundamentally an arranged marriage. Humanity is both man and woman. We can’t discount half the species, whatever side of things you’re coming from. We have to find a path to loving and appreciating and respecting and providing for one another. We need understanding of one another, and of ourselves and our needs and our failings. We need love.

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