Out Of The Animal Trap
Sexism, the Life-Cost of Money, Symmetry, and Beyond
MOTIVATION: The essay below has been 20 years in the making (I’m 66 now). In other words, I apologize in advance if young people today find it offensive for reasons I don’t know about. A few months ago I waded into today’s American dating scene (with my cultural anthropology hat on) to find out first-hand what all the noise is. I’m now convinced that social media and dating apps are doing more harm than good (our youngsters hardly know real people, only self-selected words & videos). I found the back-and-forth rage-baiting horrifying, and it motivated me to at-last finish this essay, which I hope provides a bridge over troubled waters. In my estimation, that requires ripping off “everybody’s” blinders about the do-or-die corner men have been in for thousands of years. But now, women apparently decline to return the financial-support favor. In Epilogues 3 — end I provide some hopefully-constructive answers for everyone.
SUMMARY: Relations between the sexes aren’t what they used to be (thank goodness). While sexism is not nearly over, now young men are refusing to put up with it too. Therefore, what’s coming is, a stand-off. Young men and women can now very well live without each other, so they approach relationships as a “deal”, offering my “inflated” “assets” for his/hers, and usually conclude that the “deal” isn’t worth doing. That’s right, it’s not, for three excellent reasons: #1 NO “deal” is a basis for a good relationship, #2 NOTHING is worth half of someone else’s life’s worth, let alone being worth ALL of it, and #3 Let’s stop making men work themselves into an early grave while someone else spends all his money and insults him for paying the life-time cost; that’s just cruel. I hypothesized a solution, and bet my life on it, and it worked, I found my one-and-only Melanie. Moreover, my hypothesis explains other good relationships, and why they’re rare: You both have to escape the ANIMAL TRAP, stop USING each other, even pay for your men while THEY go shouting about what’s unfair to THEM (as men did for their women, 60 years ago).
WHEN YOU’RE IN A HOLE, STOP DIGGING
For millions of years, men have had heavier and stronger upper bodies than women, so handled heavy or dangerous animals, rocks, logs, weapons, and eventually, heavy machinery. Meanwhile, women were almost permanently pregnant (when families had 7 living children, plus 5 infant mortalities) or breast-feeding and/or child-rearing, so, fully occupied for most of a life-time. Also meanwhile, men had no way to know who was their own child, and who wasn’t. These biological differences were amplified into extreme role differences. Men ended up obligated to hard labor, selling their life-times to pay for everything, being robbed of time with their families. Women were “contained” in homes: they should get married by the age of 20, and never-mind any education past high-school.
In short, men risked and sacrificed their lives to war and work, while women risked and sacrificed their lives to child-bearing and -raising. Survival first, everything else second, including family dynamics.
Those “obligations” remained with us, even into the 1970s for women in Western countries, and to the present day for everyone else, including all men everywhere. Women have been shouting about it for a century now, but men can’t even hold protest rallies because then who will pay for their food and shelter? Certainly not today’s women. We find young women expecting to be, simultaneously, dependent (entitled to spend ALL HIS money) and independent (he’d BETTER NOT tell her what to do with it)! Why would he sign up for that — getting looted? Conversely, we find young men expecting to be served for free, since she can earn her own money. Why would she sign up for that — a job and a “man-child” (as some women call it)?
What a hole we’ve dug. As the saying goes, “When you’re in a hole, stop digging!” What “stop digging” means, in practice, is the subject of this essay. First, the ridicule: let’s mock the vestiges of centuries past, this time from the exploited-male perspective (balancing Judy Brady Syfers’ 1971 essay). Then, I’ll offer some serious Epilogues. The big picture for the Epilogues is,
We are the only animals on this planet who have the ability, and, now, the opportunity, to over-rule our instincts and DECIDE our future behavior. Our entire species may be climbing “out of the animal trap”.
Readers may wish to jump to my suggested solutions at Epilogue 3 “Beyond Symmetry”, about 2/3 down (skipping my deconstruction of “the deal” in “the animal trap”). You’ll need this definition when you get there: “Symmetry = what goes for the gander goes for the goose goes for the gander goes for the goose”.
(I’M A STRAIGHT MAN, AND) I WANT A HUSBAND!
Bear in mind: I’m 66, and writing about circumstances that I lived through before many of my readers were even born. Some of this is, deliberately, setting-on-fire a straw-man that’s already half-gone. I think it should be all-gone (but people will do what they will do). And my point here is not to blame anyone for how it used to be, I’m just setting it on fire, that’s all.
In the spirit of , I’m a man who’s often thought “I want a husband!” One who will give ME a free life! And expensive gifts, too! I would love money to just appear in the bank account, without thinking that every penny comes from him having to sell his life-time — crowding whatever’s-left-of-him into the ONE DAY PER WEEK of life-time that’s left (if he’s lucky) after dressing, commuting, working, eating, and honey-do chores — selling life-time with which he must think and do whatever he’s told, selling life-time he can’t do-over and will never get back. And after he’s been stressed-out all week, he’d better work for ME on weekends! I too want a “right” to stay home, never have a boss, nor customers, nor deadline stress, nor performance reviews, nor layoffs. I too want to never ask whether I can afford to take a vacation day or sick day. I too want to make someone else buy everything for me, while I go on complaining that I’m “unpaid labor”! I too want to be paid to do whatever I choose to do at home! I wish! But unfortunately I’m a man and have spent most of my adult life being the VICTIM of such expectations. So I offer this essay as a more philosophically-based step beyond Judy Brady Syfers, still in the direction of symmetry, but 53 years later and yet the world is still swimming in sexism — also at the expense of “men”.
I put “men” and “women” in scare-quotes because you mistakenly think that those group-nouns mean something. They don’t. You won’t be able to distinguish those sets of people in your entire life, because there are 8 billion people, so it would take you 253 years to categorize them all (one per second). You might think you can distinguish them “in principle”, by resorting to genetics, with XY=male and XX=female, but no: There are cis women with XY chromosomes, and people with XXY, XYY, XXYY. You can’t rely on genitalia: There are intersex people. You also can’t resort to stereotypes: I’ve known women who would never admit they’ve gotten anything wrong, and refused to ask for directions, and wouldn’t even admit they’re lost. Every group-noun is an over-simplification of a dizzying natural variety. There is no such thing as the set of “all women” to admire for anything, nor mock, nor blame, for anything (“all men” likewise). Similarly, there is no “us” alive today who were oppressed 60 years ago, and no “them” alive today who did that oppressing 60 years ago. I’ve never been part of, nor met any remnant of, “the patriarchy” (I’ve never met Donald Trump). Yet I find myself in a society that paints “women” with one shade and “men” with another, “mothers” with one shade and “fathers” with another; a society that disavows racism while simultaneously talking of dog breeds’ characteristics as if those are NOT races! The problem is the nouns in your own heads, people! Nouns refer to concepts that exist only in your heads, and those concepts have negligible relation to reality unless you work hard to discover that relation (which is what science does). In the real world you’ll see only “somewhat similar” and “less similar”, and nouns don’t have the hard edges you only-think they have. Group-nouns are collective delusions. But unfortunately, I have to use them, because you-all do.
To judge from advertising, pulp magazines, and tabloids, “women” (I’m going to drop the scare-quotes now) should aspire to be precious luxuries: beautiful, expensive, only babbling and laughing (useless). (I’m not confused, I’m talking about the pernicious FANTASY pushed by advertising.) Behold, clothes absolutely-not designed for heavy lifting, sweat, dirt, or danger. Behold her so precious that she “needs” teensy little panties for 10 TIMES the price of men’s undies, per ounce. Behold finger-nails so long that the hands can’t do much, can barely even type. Behold shoes designed so she can’t run to save her life, nor carry anything. Behold hair and skin that never get dirty. Behold HOURS per day spent on self-beautification and self-indulgence, and “essential” arts and crafts. IT’S A FANTASY. What’s the un-stated, ignored back-ground all this requires?: A world already made flat and air-conditioned for her convenience (but not by women), plus money to burn AND time to kill. No working stiff gets any of that. We either sell our life-time, then we have money but not-enough time left to spend it, OR, we have no work, then we have time but no money! The advert-fantasy is only possible if someone else sacrifices their life-time working, so a woman can be a luxury.
But unfortunately, advertising is what it is because it WORKS — some women want it, some demand it. This fantasy is as one-eyed as some women asserting a “right” to stay at home or work, when their staying-home is only possible if someone-else pays all the bills, and therefore does NOT have the same choice! That’s not a “right”, it’s a domination. If a man doesn’t see through it immediately, he will, eventually. This is one of the big-3 reasons (mis-named “fighting over money”) why men walked out — she’s getting a free, stress-free life, entirely in charge of her time, limited only by how much money he gives her, and she’s COMPLAINING about that?! — never-mind how much of his life he must sell and have no control over, because he has to pay for HER and all her wants?! I WISH I could have her life! I’ve NEVER had a choice to stay home and do what I want, let alone think about what I want. The only choice I’ve ever had is, work or starve, and even my work had to be competed for, it was never a right. Apparently, some women think they’re entitled to “rights” I’ve never had, and never will. And, again, advertising (products, services, materialism, where the money is) is TERRIBLY not-helping, it’s FANTASY-LAND, and guess who watched those commercials during work-hours.
A CHARICATURE THAT RECURS TO THIS DAY (CAUGHT IN THE ANIMAL TRAP = NO DEAL)
In October 2007 (when I was 49), a young woman (25) “put [herself] out there in an honest way” as “beautiful (spectacularly beautiful)” in search of “MARRIAGE ONLY” (her capitals) to a man who earned at least $ half-a-million / year. She wondered why any such men have “settled for” “plain Jane” women when they could’ve had herself? A “gentle respondent” in her desired age and income-range replied that (1) it’s a bad deal for him because “my income increases but … you won’t be getting any more beautiful! … By 35, stick a fork in you!” (he wrote) and (2) her wanting “MARRIAGE ONLY” was a hypocrisy because “If my money were to go away, so would you. So when your beauty fades, I want out too.”
I’m told that similar conversations happen to this day. In brief, a man says “You want A, B, C, D and E from me, what will YOU bring to the table?” She replies “Me!” or if she’s a strong, over-confident woman, “I AM the table!” So he walks away, amused, and writes her up in his blog.
The above exchanges seem to me a much-needed and many-centuries-overdue step toward equality, though so far only as her thesis + his anti-thesis, and disappointingly short of a syn-thesis! That synthesis is,
SYMMETRY: what goes for the gander goes for the goose goes for the gander goes for the goose.
This turns out to be a very sharp sword indeed. Equality only when it suits women is not symmetry. For example: no calling it “work” if you’re doing things you chose to do, when “work” for him means, having NO choice about selling his life-time to demanding bosses or customers; no choosing to not-have-a-job just because you don’t like your options, you get to be in the same do-or-die corner men have been in for centuries; no taking part-time or low-stress jobs as-if some man should pay for almost-everything; no socializing, no long personal phone-calls, no soap-operas, during work-hours, unless you want a pay-cut; no expecting a man to make the first move, nor pay for the first date, nor propose, nor expecting expensive rings without giving him any, you are on those hooks (too); no expecting him to spend his lifetime paying for you, unless you’ll spend your lifetime paying for him, and not a little bit; if every “man” who doesn’t earn a fortune is a “loser”, so is every “woman” who doesn’t earn a fortune; no rescuing “women and children first” as if you’re somehow more essential than fathers; no expecting him to die for you, you get to die for him (too). Level the field, or call yourself a sexist. That’s symmetry.
The “gold digger” above seems utterly oblivious to the feminism of the last 100 years pointing out that women are not possessions nor sex objects. The “gentle respondent”, for a financially savvy man, did a very poor job of analyzing the “deal” she sought. I want to berate both of them, and in the process, blow away all the silliness that continues to this day — in some corners of the backs of some people’s minds. Symmetry, to the rescue:
1. She wanted a (“MARRIAGE ONLY”) commitment for (a) half his existing assets, and (b) half his life’s future income, to buy her fleeting beauty! He sensibly nixed that.
2. Is he buying her beauty as-of the purchase date, or is he buying its up-keep over time? This is a logical extension of the point he did notice, namely that her beauty is a depreciating asset, like a car. If he’s buying her beauty as delivered, he’s not paying for the future: It’s on her to stay beautiful. Furthermore, he’s also not paying HER for the past. Since she is only 25, and her parents spent 21 years feeding and grooming her, apparently for sale in the high-priced beautiful-meat market, her parents deserve 84% of the money (like a dowry). One re-pays the farmer who raised the meat, one doesn’t pay the meat for eating the farmer’s hay! So it turns out that he should pay HER for only the thin sliver-in-time in which she maintained herself, and that thin sliver-in-time is hardly worth any fraction of his entire life’s wages.
3. Alright then, let’s try it the other way = he should pay for the upkeep of her beauty. The more expensive she looks, the more she’s worth, right??? Expensive hair, expensive skin, expensive make-up, expensive eye-lashes, expensive jewelry, expensive finger-nails, expensive bras, expensive clothes, fantastically expensive panties, expensive hand-bags, expensive toe-nails, expensive shoes. A man should APPRECIATE how much of his money she “needs” to spend on herself. OMG, men, RUN! Unfortunately the costs will increase dramatically over time, as it becomes very difficult to look like she’s still 25. This brings up the question of limits. Exclude everything but beauty products. She can’t be so foolish as to think that she should be paid for eating, for grooming herself, and for merely walking about under his roof, as if any of that is “work”!
Nowadays, she will put on all her expensive looks just-before walking out the door, and take them off right after coming home. He should pay her to be beautiful to everyone BUT him??
4. So it comes to this: Exactly how much of his annual income should he hand over, to purchase her fleeting beauty and/or upkeep? If this is not stipulated, he runs the risk that what’s his (income) will be deemed “ours”, and what’s “ours” will all be spent by HER (because he’s too busy to even think about spending it). If she does earn any money, then that will be hers too, because she earned it fair and square. (Obviously, he DIDN’T earn HIS fair and square, while SHE’s making up the rules.) If HE gets a bonus, he should spend it on her, and if SHE gets a bonus, he should celebrate HER. Thus she will suck down both their incomes, leaving him in a bind to pay HER taxes, and making him fight to get any of his own money, not to mention he should still somehow fund her retirement despite her spending, and he should be grateful, GRATEFUL!, if she lives long enough to suck down all his retirement-savings too, so there’ll be NOTHING left for him, not now and not ever. I’m not making this up, all this was said and done to me. It’s what some/many women have been doing since the 1960s: HIS income is “for the household”, but hers is HERS — and then they wonder why men get angry! A reality-check is many decades overdue. She gets to spend HER income ONLY, and she gets to live and save and retire with THAT, and if she gets ANY of his money, she gets to be accountable to him for that, and if he gets a bonus or promotion, she gets to celebrate HIM for that (and NOT pay for that celebration with his own money). EVERYONE pay your own way, 100%, like it or not. That’s symmetry. (It’s not the goal, but I’ll get to that later.)
5. Why should he pay for the wedding in addition to (BEFORE owning) her “spectacular beauty”? What if he’s already paid the wedding costs but then she changes her mind, how will she pay him back? From her NEXT husband’s assets? Awkward…
6. She advertised for a marriage, but said nothing about, what that “marriage” should entail. Does she expect to be admired for her “spectacular beauty”? But he’s already bought that, it is his, so she should be admiring HIM being able to purchase it, like owning a spectacular car or house. If she desires to be admired BY him, then she needs to order this service from him for a stipulated period and rate, and his time is not cheap.
7. Obviously, this beauty-for-money bargaining is not going well. Perhaps they should take a different tack in which a man is expected to spend his entire life paying for something else? One thing men are expected to pay for is (“Don’t you love me?”) their own love of their wife and children! But then, applying the Principle of Symmetry, since the woman hopes to earn nothing, she has no love for her husband, not one penny’s worth. He SHOULD feel like he’s nothing but a walking wallet, or a pocket being picked. Some women go even further and claim that he should be grateful that she’s putting up with him, so he’s paying for both, his own love, and her disdain! That’s a helluva bill she’s handing him, in the name of “love”! Let’s give HER such a bill, shall we (symmetry)? He gets to disdain HER unless she pays him for HIS respect, with her entire life’s worth, and it’d better be GOOD! Point made?
Of course, Round 2 of this argument goes that “love” “should” “rise above” such “trivia” as money. Unless it’s on her to pay for everything, then it’s not love nor trivia. See Epilogue 3.
8. Rising to this challenge, some women have of course suggested that their men are actually paying for something valuable — When all else fails, make stuff up, and if he’s stupid enough to believe it, he DESERVES to be despised. (What a good relationship, NOT.) She may suggest that he is paying for her at-home work — but he’d better not believe it, for he will be told very quickly that she’s NOT his employee, and he’d BETTER NOT think that he’s the boss of her! So she’s saying: She wants his entire life’s income as HER income, for doing whatever she chooses. If/when that works, she claims to be “unpaid labor” and demands to be paid AGAIN. I WISH such employers existed, I want one too! Dream on. (And let’s not over-look that her “work”, being entirely under her own control/discretion, is less stressful than any paying job, which pays you to NOT do what you like, actually demanding your brain full-time, and demanding more work than there is time for: If you finish anything early, you get more work, so that you’re ALWAYS stressed-out, on purpose. And then they wonder why men die 5 years younger!) So, “employment” wasn’t nice enough. Alright then, let’s suppose that this relationship is more like he’s hiring her as a contractor. Same problem: in both employment and contracting, the employer says what’s wanted, and approves and owns everything the employee/contractor produces/fixes while being paid. So it is all his — parts and labor, time and materials, all bought with his life’s-worth of money. When a contractor fixes or decorates a house, they don’t own it too, do they! I gather that she doesn’t like this deal, either. She wants it so that, the more of his money she spends on the house, the more the house is worth and the more her half is worth, and that is in fact how the law works now. The more of his money she spends on the house, the richer she gets! If I were granted such legalized looting of husbands, I too might make up a “new era of unlimited abundance”, and mock men for not seeing it! I too would like to roll in someone else’s money. I WISH I could find a generous man.
9. Unfortunately — and it’s most regrettable that any women ever went here — it is also suggested that a woman’s sexual services are a valuable part of a marriage “deal”. Most regrettable, because this makes marriage about sex-for-money, which is usually called prostitution. Fortunately, the Principle of Symmetry reveals this “deal” for the fraud it always was: Doesn’t she owe him equally much money for HIS sexual services? Or are we to think that she wouldn’t care if she’s sex-less for her entire life? I don’t believe it. And, even if this payment-for-services WAS imaginable as a “deal”, it’s a very bad deal indeed: Since she wants to be paid $500K per year for the 2,200 hours of services in a normal work-year, he would be paying her $227/hour (tax-free, by the way), which is more than enough to buy a hooker for EVERY WORKING HOUR. Since a wife will “put out” only a tiny fraction of that, she’s just made herself insanely expensive compared to a hooker. Obviously, somebody didn’t think this “deal” through at all. And now, here come Artificial Intelligence sex robots. This sex-for-money “deal” is doomed.
10. Finally, there’s the having of children. She doesn’t need a man for that, she could use a sperm bank. That would solve three problems at once: (a) no man wants to be used as a walking sperm bank, (b) her biological clock is nobody else’s problem, and (c) apparently, lots of men do not agree that she can choose to have or not-have his child regardless of his wishes. Use a sperm-bank, problems solved. Unless she wants a man to be her walking wallet, but that’s a serious mistake, for many reasons: A. USING a man as a walking wallet will end badly for everyone involved. B. How does a birth entitle her to live at his expense — breast-feeding is unnecessary, and done in months — why wouldn’t a birth entitle HIM to live at HER expense? C. Let’s turn this viral question around (“What would you rather meet in the woods, a bear or a man? The bear!”): What would you rather meet in the woods, your wife with children, or a gang of armed criminals? The gang of armed criminals! They don’t want your children, the worst thing they can do is kill you; they can’t take your FUTURE wages; can’t divorce you to get another half of whatever’s left; can’t demand alimony too; can’t rob you of your children; can’t force you to pay child support for children that aren’t yours (by paternity fraud and/or estoppel); and when the gang assaults you, everybody will believe you. There is no recovering — not ever — from a wife’s destruction of a man’s life. (For those who don’t see any death here: The only suicide in my circles was a man who shot himself over this, on his ex-wife’s birthday. RIP, Paul Aglio.) So, let’s also send this one back to the women it came from: “As long as we can’t trust all of you, we can’t trust any of you.” (Clearly, many young women weren’t mature/sympathetic enough to see the symmetry.)
What an unholy mess! Centuries of relationship built on NOT thinking, let alone thinking symmetrically! Good relationships are not based on any kind of deal. Neither are they built on fending-off the losing side until that side finally says go-to-hell. Hypocrisies and exploitations will not endure. When men can afford to demand what THEY think is fair (less labor time), “the deal” will fall apart even faster than it is now. Au contraire, the Principle of Symmetry says what the “gentle respondent” wrote to the young woman on the web: “You could always work to earn [ALL] your own money, and then we wouldn’t need to have this difficult conversation.”
EPILOGUE 1: THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LIFE
Fortunately, I recognized the Principle of Symmetry when I was 16 (50 years ago), and I still say “fortunately” even though some women find it a road-block to a free life. Of course it is: There’s no such thing as a free life. If anyone will not work, s/he cannot buy food, nor clothes, nor shelter, nor a bed, nor furniture, nor anything else. Somebody has to pay for all that, by selling their life-time. Nobody’s getting a free life at my expense (so not free) and then calling it “unpaid labor”. Someone can get a free life at my expense only if I can get a free life at their expense. Not just “[they] WOULD (return that favor)” pie-in-the-sky, as if babbling noble intentions (would, but never will) is worth ANYTHING, let-alone worth everything I have to work for. I’ll have my free life, for-real, and right-now! And if I don’t get to tell my wife what to do with her free life, she doesn’t get to tell me what to do with mine. Symmetry cuts both ways.
Part of what’s behind the above tug-of-war is, who owns what why. A hundred years ago, women could legally own nothing, and there are echoes of that, above. As reprehensible as that was, treating a man like a walking wallet is equally reprehensible. When she wants to stay home (maybe “for the baby”, maybe because she doesn’t like a job), he gets shoved out the door to work, and is forced away from his children, and then, she wants to be PAID for this monstrous theft of his family, when she should be compensating him for it! Then follow decades of sexist stupidity — as if he should pay everything for her, free life, free children, and all — decades in which he gets no time to think about relationships, no time to think about himself, negligible spare time, until he’s desperate for ANY time he’s not being yanked around, while it never matters what he wants, not at work and not at home, until asking him what-he-wants causes confused silence, his spare life-time is so scarce that you can’t MAKE him think about mere paint-colors or hair-colors or nail-colors, so she runs him over, and mocks him for not knowing/caring about everything he has no time for, due to the forced labor she herself has inflicted on him, every day including weekends. “He’s no fun anymore” ‘cos there’s nothing left! Use him up, and blame him for it too. When they get divorced and she totally-steals his children, he is expected to go on paying her so she can bribe his children away from him with his own money — and then she wonders why he refuses to help her with that! Employed married men have NEVER owned either the products of their labor (their employer does) nor their wages (their wife does), nor their children. What’s left for him?! Only his wife’s exertion for his wants and wishes — THAT’s how someone who’s being given a free life should return that immense favor — full-time, even.
But nowadays, whether she’s working or not, he gets no such consideration (in Western countries); he should pay up and shut up. I’ve even heard a woman complain loudly and self-righteously, in a restaurant, that her husband had asked, what was left for him? and her response was “That’s not a marriage!” (But it IS her marriage. See what I mean about group-nouns, e.g. the dizzying natural variety of “marriages”, getting strangely hard edges in people’s heads?) Finally, she paid for all those Ladies Who Lunch In Luxury, and collected their thanks. (I too would like to be generous with someone else’s money, and take all the credit.) Her husband wasn’t there ‘cos he had to work for 6½ HOURS to earn back (with taxes) the money she blew on her friends in 1 hour. He got nothing — no thanks from her, no credit from anyone, not even his own money spent on a lunch for himself. In only 10 minutes, she demonstrated that she was exploiting him, and blamed him for knowing it, and other women said nothing. OK then, since “that’s not a marriage”, FIRE her.
More generally, “the rules” of “who owns what why” are unclear, and conflict, and change over time. The book “Mine!” (2021) by Michael Heller and James Salzman, is an education about the issues, but doesn’t dare to even mention “the battle of the sexes”. The law was not fair 100 years ago, and it’s not fair now.
The Principle of Symmetry is merely a more-explanatory name for the Golden and Silver Rules: “[Don’t] do to others what you [don’t] want done to you.” It was first written as “Love your neighbor as yourself” 2,500 years ago, and most of us STILL don’t get it. It takes imagination and compassion to see how far-reaching it is. Had this Principle been practiced much, there would have been no racism, no nationalism, no wars, no slavery, no sexism, no human trafficking, no drug lords, no arrogant royalty nor egregious profiteering, no crime at all — except that perpetrated by sick brains. Unfortunately, many humans are more inclined to do whatever they want and take whatever they can get, by verbal hook or actual crook. To mitigate this selfishness/theft, we make bargains, agreements, and contracts, but some people blithely welch on their agreements because “it’s different now”… and it’s ALWAYS “different now”, sucka (e.g. it’s an hour later). The defenses against such betrayals are, either, no agreement at all, or agreements that are short-term (no commitment), or agreements that continually deliver value to the payer, much like, oh, employment. If you’re not paying your own way, someone else is, and THEY’re entitled, to what THEY want out of your time.
EPILOGUE 2: TITANIC INEQUALITIES
In the famous movie “Titanic” (1997), Jack exists so he can save Rose from “society” and then drown for her benefit. Celine Dion sang “My heart will go on” on Rose’s behalf, never-mind Jack’s heart freezing, that’s not even an irony. Never-mind Rose’s husband at all. YES she had a husband, too. We heard (about 15 minutes into the movie) that she later married, had 2 children, and an adult grand-daughter is accompanying her on the boat, so there had to be “some man” in her life. But the pictures Rose puts beside her bed, at the end of the movie, don’t identify him. He doesn’t matter. Almost no viewers notice. When Rose dies, she meets Jack on the Titanic; her husband, and the father of her children, isn’t there, either. Why would any man be any woman’s husband, if all he gets for it is, being used-up when alive, and erased when dead?! Rose was, and is, so self-centered that it’s a poke in the eye. HER heart will go on, that’s all that matters. “Titanic” was lauded as a “romantic” movie, but I find it exploitative, of men. Are we all seeing that gigantic blind spot yet, that sends men away to work, and then erases and even insults what’s left of them? No deal anymore!
But Jack is all play, and no work. Guess what, that’s wrong too. He would’ve needed a free life at HER expense. That’s such a horrible ending — to sexists — that they rather drowned him than make people think about it… even though he could’ve floated on the same piece of wood as Rose, and any woman worth having, would’ve saved HIS life too. Indeed, imagine the whole movie with the roles reversed. Jack would let Rose babble and freeze for his own benefit, Jack’s future wife would be invisible, and Jack’s heart will bravely “go on”. Women would hurl insults at it. What does that tell you? Two things: #1 Men’s lives have always been disposable, and that particular inequality is A-OK, and #2 Where are the men loudly insulting “Titanic”? The silence is deafening. Ah, there’s one of those men, still risking his life for a cat:
The new movie “Barbie” is mockable. We hear from Gloria how conflicted it is to be a woman, but nobody puts in one balancing word for men, and again, nobody notices. Here’s what Allan could’ve said: Some women show off their bodies, then blame men for looking; some women think men rude for not opening doors, others slap men for doing it, how DARE he think she needs that; some women ask for help, then call it man-splaining; some women ask a man to apply muscles, then mock him for doing it; some women complain to HR about unwanted attention, then complain when they’re left alone; some women call men sexists for offering to help, then blame men for not-helping when needed; most women don’t want construction or engineering jobs, then blame men for still dominating those fields; men should sacrifice their home-lives to support their families, AND be authentic, AND never angry; men should “open up” (be vulnerable) and “man up” (get rejected, A LOT).
After that list of irrational double-binds, several Kens should be snapping out of their servitude to being the “provider-protector” for Barbie (as Barbies snapped out of their servitude to Ken). But we’re not done. Here’s a paragraph from Warren Farrell’s “The Boy Crisis” page 89: “We want our son to have integrity, but [not turn] himself in to the police because he went 59 in a 55 mph zone. We want him to be assertive, but not aggressive; to be empathetic, but not naive; to be ‘a doer’, but also introspective [but not “over-think”]; to be perseverant, but not stubborn [nor a harasser]; to be prepared, but not obsessive; to help people, but not enable them.” Now how many Kens do we still have to wake up?
What IS that bizarre scene of the Kens fighting each other, turning into an over-long dance in colorful nowhere-space? I can’t see how that mirrors anything oppressed women did/do in the real world? I don’t know what to make of it, other than, it’s an ideological feminist jab at men waging war, as if Ukrainian men are ridiculous for buying time (with their lives) so their women and children can flee? Are we seeing “Thanks for nothing?” Men’s lives are disposable, again, and that’s supposed to be funny?
The movie could’ve ended with BOTH stars “getting real”, but no, it’s more fun and profit to equate “patriarchy” with “all men”, leave them all behind, and sell female chauvinism. I recall when male chauvinism was a bad thing. I naively expect that female chauvinism is a bad thing too?
Ah, there’s a few more of those men, carefully avoiding death, and handing their wages over to their women, so these men still can’t afford to go shouting about the anti-symmetries revealed by “Titanic” and “Barbie”.
The solution is: symmetry. Symmetry cuts both ways. It includes: Don’t do unto others what you don’t want done to you. Turn-about is fair play. Men could boycott supremacist women, just as some women went on strike against entitled men in the 1960s (while those men kindly went on buying those women their food and shelter). EVERYONE beware what you do, for, in the fullness of time, it may be done back to you.
EPILOGUE 3: BEYOND SYMMETRY
Now that many women are earning their own incomes, and sometimes out-earning men, they’re starting to “get it”: Why on earth should she marry a man with less wealth, less status, less looks; why hand over her assets to someone who has no idea how much stress she’s under, and who spends it as if money is free, on whatever he wants, and still complains, that he has to do everything in the house, for free (?!), and she’s no fun? Ladies, I so sympathize: Welcome to being a man! Welcome to handing over your pay-check to a stay-at-home spouse. Symmetry is arriving, at last! Or not. It’s causing women to find the prospect distasteful; they’d rather not have that husband role. Guess what: For THOUSANDS of years, BILLIONS of men would rather not have that husband role! Now they’re RUNNING away from it. This is causing some women to complain that they can’t find a generous man. If he’s got it, he should hand it over; if SHE’s got it, it’s hers. Clearly, “gimme” comes much easier than symmetry.
Symmetry is a sharp and entertaining diagnostic tool, as above, and it’s a strong defense against selfishness, entitlement, and hypocrisy, but it’s not an efficient use of human resources. Men, women, and others, each having to do half of everything, is inefficient and occasionally even impossible. Couples MUST deviate from symmetry; but not willy-nilly just because one is more selfish, or more hypocritical, or more socially-sanctioned, or full of “shoulds”, or faster with self-serving rationalizations; but deviate from symmetry care-fully, in ways that benefit both; and with those gains they must give back to each other, in consideration, and in representing each other, to their kids and to others.
Just as there was-and-is “the woman behind the man”, there was-and-is “the man behind the woman” (and similarly for same-sex couples). Since “the man before the woman” was always so, at women’s expense, until they demanded more respect for themselves, now there is “the woman before and behind the man” while men get no credit at all (in Western countries; and recall “Barbie”). That’s SO the wrong answer. If s/he (is a home-maker and) makes things and gives them away? Or makes friends while taking the kids/dogs to a park during his/her partner’s work-hours? The “social glue” owes his/her slack-time to someone else, and needs to ensure that that partner gets as much thanks and social credit as s/he does. Conversely, the working partner could not be so productive without the home-maker’s support. Be warned: From symmetry, only deviate care-fully, or the grateful give-back that’s missing now will cause an ugly divorce eventually. Screw what “society” “thinks” (“society” doesn’t have a brain), couples must be best friends and include/represent each other, always and everywhere. Consideration and reciprocity.
Symmetry is not a practical solution; continuing adjustment-by-agreement, of offsets-from-symmetry, IS a solution. But, behind continuing adjustment-by-agreement, there is the need for good mutual understanding, and compassion for each other’s sacrifices and distresses. You get such understanding and compassion by (a) you find a partner who has both, similar nature, and similar experience, as yourself, after (b) you have faith that such a similar person exists, “even” in the opposite sex:
Look For Your Psychological Twin.
(This is the exact opposite of “opposites attract”.) This is a very difficult thing to do, for many reasons, e.g. many of us are so sexist that we can’t imagine that such a person exists (s/he does now); many of us care more about “assets” than anything deep; we’re all rare people who initially don’t know our own distinctiveness, and many of us would need help to figure that out (being “weird” is a very helpful clue); many of us are repelled by the idea of loving someone like ourselves (which is also a very helpful clue, e.g. lose the fe/male chauvinism, criticism, contempt); and, many of us want an easy way out (let someone else make us feel whole temporarily, that’s why “opposites attract”). But what’s our intelligence for, if not to save us from our dumb instincts AND from ideologies! So I inferred the concept of “psychological twin”, and then, deduced how to find “my one”. Some examples: • Coming from the same culture avoids lots of potential mis-understandings. • Having the same “love languages” (Chapman 2009) lets both sides feel loved, effortlessly. • If one of you is “The Highly Sensitive Person” (Aron 1996), it’ll help a lot if both are. • I’m very auditory (as opposed to visual), but for 50 years I didn’t realize how influential that was. It’s why I remember so much of what I hear, and love music, and distill-out patterns-over-time, and love silence, even during conversations, and notice what is NOT said, and dislike noise and interruptions. After I figured it out, I found Melanie, who is also auditory. Now we don’t need to argue about noise in our house. You see how it works? We turned out to be so similar that when we went shopping for floor-tiles, we independently picked the same design, out of thousands. Thus I learned to trust her choices. We even had similarly stone-walling ex-es, and helped each other understand why — we’re both analytical, too — and with all honesty and sympathy, nothing left to hide. The more similar psychology, the better the understanding, the easier the agreement, the more appreciation and happiness.
Do you see any looks or status (size, health, career, rank, wealth, education) in the above selection criterion? No. Such superficial criteria… That’s what animals do. NONE of that is any reason to think a relationship will be good. We’re mostly animals in our teens and 20s (evidence: in “Bachelor In Paradise”, hot-ness over-rules everything, for both sexes; they make me wonder how any marriage ever survives), and we’re enticed to stay mere animals, by advertising, which wants us hooked on products and services they can sell us. It’s an ANIMAL TRAP.
Vendors can sell us everything but the one thing that matters most:
Humanely and deeply understand each other, first. Animal attractions and other boxes-to-check, second.
This priority has the salutary effect of always regarding each other as independently human, and not as, only here to be USED for what I want (including being used for sex, or fun).
Aren’t I merely saying that money’s not important, after all? No I’m not, because (a) that usually means “YOUR life’s time and worth are not important” which is an insult and a hypocrisy, and (b) money is as important as symmetry, which is the burden of this essay. Money is storage for the value of life-energy that goes into work INSTEAD OF having the life you want. It has always been that. My money, my choice; for both men and women, or for neither.
EPILOGUE 4: DIFFICULTY IS NOBODY’S FAULT
In Epilogue 3 I proposed that the solution was, “Look for your psychological twin”, I and explained why that was difficult. There is more to that difficulty, and it’s worth explaining, in hopes that we can all stop blaming “the opposite sex”, as it used to be called.
Melanie & I watch “The Bachelor/ette”. The human dynamics are interesting, but “the math” is actually important. The star bachelor/ette is given 25 candidates of opposite sex (mid-20s to early-30s) and dates them to find 1 best match. Around the time there are 2 candidates left, the star bachelor/ette feels s/he could marry either of them, so 1-in-10 seem perfect, to them. I thought 1-in-10 was far too easy, which made my science-brain turn on. Can we get a better handle on that fraction of people who might match? Yes, because that Bachelor/ette show has been — unintentionally — conducting a very revealing science experiment. There have been about 30 bachelor/ettes, times 25 candidates each = 750 possible pairings. After some searching, you find only 5 actual marriages. That means two things:
#1 Of the 30 televised heart-throb engagements, 25 blew up after the show was over. But the young participants still think “the process works”. Like many humans, they don’t ask, “What do I NOT know about this?”
#2 More importantly, 5 actual marriages out of 750 possible pairings comes to 1 match per 150 possibilities. I’d like to say “good match”, but we don’t know how good those marriages are; and I’d like to say “random possibilities”, but they’re not random: The participants know how the show works, and must believe that 3 dates is enough to decide to marry someone, so they’re wildly-optimistic risk-takers, a.k.a. reckless. It’s very likely that, in the real world, the chance of a good match between 2 RANDOM people is far worse than 1-in-150. When you consider that half of marriages end in divorce, and of the remaining marriages, only some fraction is happy, it’s not hard to believe that the chance of a good match between 2 random people might be 1-in-1000. For rare people, it might even be 1-in-a-million.
A 1-in-1000 probability is a very bad bet. Instead, one must change the odds, by knowing what one is looking for, and knowing where/how to find it (see the next paragraph). If one lacks the necessary insight or self-discipline to solve that problem, the result will be, many bad relationships. After such bad experience (which is virtually inevitable in our 20s and 30s), most of us blame the people we’ve been dating, who just happen to all be the opposite sex! But it’s got nothing to do with the opposite sex. You think LGBTQ+ people don’t have all the same problems? It’s just far more difficult than anyone expects. That’s nobody’s fault.
Blaming the opposite sex is worse than useless because it avoids asking oneself the question that unlocks all the others:
Why have I been so wrong?
(Answer: read Harville Hendrix; get out of the animal trap; stop dating, casually get to know many real people.) Is the good-match problem so difficult that I should be using my human-brain to over-rule my animal-brain? (Yes.) What kind of selection criteria DO make a good match? (Truth before ego; reality before ideology and bigotry; empathy instead of criticism or contempt; similar family histories, deeply understanding each other; same “love language”; considerateness; and much agreement about what we like. I wrapped all that up as, “Look for your psychological twin” — assuming you are so qualified!) Where can I find, and how can I identify, people who meet such criteria? (Visit public places somewhat peculiar to me, phone down, eyes up, and strike up chats about personal stuff. The people you want will happily “get real”.)
When I had practiced that for 3 years, and then met Melanie, after only 5 seconds of hearing her voice I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience and stepping through a wall — like I already knew her = impossible. (Later, she told me that she also felt like she already knew me, before we’d even locked eyes. Neither of us can explain it. However, with only one such example, I can’t say it should be like this for everyone.) It took me 52 years to find her. Then it took us another 6 years of healing (much detail omitted), to earn a wedding week full of joy. She’s my one-and-only. All’s well that ends well, and we remain grateful beyond words.
Indeed, we now feel irreplaceable, to each other. This is quite the opposite of the “animal trap”, which makes people superficially interchangeable and therefore individually worthless.
EPILOGUE 5: ON SYMMETRY, ONE MORE TIME
Melanie has read this essay, of course. She’s one of the few people on this planet that “gets it”, from many angles, having worked as HR. Now she’s the most hands-on, brains-on, sweat-equity general-contractor I’ve ever seen. For example, a kitchen remodel with herself as principal worker; and making my new working-from-home office functional and tolerable just because I have to be shut in there all day every day. In my tiny slivers of spare time, she makes excellent dinners, that are the best parts of my days. I don’t think of her as an employee, but she respects the life-time-cost of money, and delivers it too, and I appreciate that, deeply. I tell her she could do less, but she does it how she wants it.
Some readers might wonder, Is the juice EVER worth the squeeze? Absolutely yes. • If/when you find the right person — if/when you are so qualified yourself — there is no squeezing to do, it’s all just kindness. You’ll still irritate each other occasionally, but you’ll often realize that you’re doing the same thing to each other, so it’s more like “Oh, of course”, almost-never a fight. • My mother had a saying from The Netherlands: “Shared sorrow is half the sorrow, shared joy is double the joy.” • There is financial resilience against layoffs, ill health, or even, becoming disabled. • There can be love and sex that feel like, I’m happy now, forever. • It might even be possible to equitably raise a family.
BUT, all of these are “the cart”, which can only come after “the horse” of deeply understanding each other. Putting the cart before the horse is, unavoidably, USING each other, and highly unlikely to succeed.
A demand that men must pay for the first date is not only anti-symmetrical, it’s also putting the cart before the horse. (She may demand, he may refuse, or this could start a conversation.)
I’ll summarize the rest of this essay into a few bullet-points:
· Fighting for equality only when that suits women, is not symmetry, it’s supremacy.
· Those women who push their supremacy will find only lesser men (duh). (Same the other way round.)
· Having a reaction to anyone because he’s a man, and the continuing chatter about “women are like this, men are like that”, is all stereotyping, sexism, and bigotry. Avoid anyone engaging in it, for they cannot see the individual standing before them.
· I refuse to be shamed, or guilt-tripped, or apologize, for crimes I’ve never committed.
· The vast majority of men still sacrifice their life-times to working for their families, and can’t march for more human-time and father-time, because women decline to buy them food and shelter (as men have done for their wives forever, including when their wives went on strike, 60 years ago).
· Advertising is nothing but animal trap, AND it’s full of fantasies, some of which are toxic. How is it OK that ads routinely mock men now? THAT’S NOT FUNNY, shouted in the reverse direction, 60 years later.
· Intolerance, of alleged/perceived intolerance, is still intolerance, and therefore, hypocrisy. It’s still “You must live inside the box I define for you, or else.” See the next paragraph.
Does “diversity, equity, and inclusion” mean everyone EXCEPT straight white men, now? Please see Cassie Jaye’s documentary “The Red Pill” (it’s not about Red Pillers). I see, in Cassie, an excellent human. She’s a feminist film-maker who went out of her way to find out what she didn’t know (rare!), who listened through her own biases (rare!), and who got shut-down by feminist hot-heads yelling about “misogyny” and “hate speech” before they could’ve ever seen the film. Feminists shutting down a feminist discovering men’s issues — how intolerant, how disappointing. Voltaire knew the answer 300 years ago: “I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” [S.G.Tallentyre = E.B.Hall, in The Friends of Voltaire, 1906].
I hope this essay will spread some understanding (that crucial word again) and help us to “stop digging”, but I know from experience that the people most in need of this essay will be the least likely to read it and take it to heart. We are all born with confirmation bias (self-justification, rationalization, unrealistic ideology, friends chosen to agree with us, echo chambers) versus asking, How might I (and all my friends) be wrong. And, we can’t yet mitigate one of Nature’s cruelties: IF we want children, we must have them before we know enough to climb out of the “animal trap” and find our “psychological twin”. Thus, it has taken me 66 years: born naïve, then idealistic but wrong; gain this perspective, suspect a solution, bet my life on it, and succeed; and realize that I might have something valuable to say, even today.
The video embedded above () covers a small part of this essay. Its last sentence is a cliff-hanger: “My own behavior reveals that I don’t believe that this is the appropriate basis of a relationship”. Hallelujah! What IS the appropriate basis? He doesn’t say. My answer is Epilogue 3, tested and successful:
Get out of the animal trap, put away social media and group-think, stop dating, casually meet real people, think symmetry and beyond, and figure out how to find your psychological twin.
Symmetry Not Supremacy! Symmetry Not Supremacy!
Out Of The Animal Trap! Out Of The Animal Trap!
Here’s a metaphor for, where we could (?) be going. It’s the finale of Felix Mendelssohn’s “Elijah”: “And then shall your light break forth”. Note the glorious back-and-forth between male and female voices. And the magnificent, soaring, 7-fold Amen. It wouldn’t be possible without both men and women. It makes me cry, with gratitude, and hope. Maybe I’ll come back in 1,000 years, to see whether we’ve all grasped symmetry yet.
