Neither ‘Higher Men’ Nor ‘Higher Women’: or, Everyone for Themselves in Self-Exploration

My thought: A decent minority of the population will simply get used to altered life expectations of a family and kids, more kids or none, or even a potential for a change in career or place of living. Lack of money, time, talent, health, social skills and intelligence, just constraining us like we were pre-1980s.

Reverse, decent minority simply do not do the shebang. I think professional women in that group who don’t, will work for a single parent family with IVF. Sperm is super cheap in so many ways. Altered away from expecting the buffet life: They trim down expectations, as they get older, viable partners disappear into the yonder, education and professional investment begin to truly pay their huge dividends (30s through 50s), and the technologies simply exist to make single parenthood as easy as two- or Nth-parent families.

I think women will generally break that unprecedented ground, set trends, make some mistakes along the way, but generally run those shows better than the men. I don’t know precisely when, but I see pretty obvious trends of women taking charge of both public life and private life. They live longer, live healthier, get more education, work more, run homes more, and invest smarter like properties and retirement plans. It’s edges in each domain that would simply seem to amplify each other to make it a more or less secured women future.

The men are the ones adapting not at all. Either opting out or becoming reactionary, mostly, I see those guys as a lost cause. So, if they opt out or become reactionary, they’re either out of the picture or in a superminority destined to lose most of their ‘battles.’

So, my sense of women is mostly building lives without partnership largely as a necessity to fulfillment — like even in marriages, basically, becoming business or economic generation partnerships, where the romance and sex life is dead, and the friendship is a lost cause. ‎

Rebecca Traister made some powerful arguments about women’s anger as a key to revolutionary change in societies. She describes how contemporary women are reshaping, basically, every normative institution, explaining how modernist women have a curve in life mostly without men and then partnered for child rearing and then divorcing followed by the rest with their women relationships — friends, besties, etc.

So, men are sort of a middle of life thing, but largely absent for most of the beginning and most of the end of life. And we’re seeing this politically, generationally. The women younger and younger are cosmopolitan and the men are more and more parochial, traditionalist. Traditionalism gave them authority, duty, respect: A place, as men. Women reject those traditions and values, especially with more exposure to the world, to work, to economic freedom, and no need for a traditional man.

My one friend is 24/25 dating some guy who is mid-40s for common law benefits and the job. That’s another minority. Women simply going for older guys who have something to offer. Women are leaving men in their cohort in the f-ing dust. But those guys that are still successful are a vanishing minority.

So, they go even older, exaggerating normal trends. We see this or hear conversations implying this or speaking to this. I agree with Mencken. Women are much more practical than the men, realistic. The world may still be run by second-rate men like him. But the attention of one second-rate man is probably a better bet than ten times the affection of a third-rate or fourth-rate troupe or gaggle of men. ‎

Traister said, “On some level, if not intellectual then animal, there has always been an understanding of the power of women’s anger: that as an oppressed majority in the United States, women have long had within them the potential to rise up in fury, to take over a country in which they’ve never really been offered their fair or representative stake. Perhaps the reason that women’s anger is so broadly denigrated — treated as so ugly, so alienating, and so irrational — is because we have known all along that with it came the explosive power to upturn the very systems that have sought to contain it. What becomes clear, when we look to the past with an eye to the future, is that the discouragement of women’s anger — via silencing, erasure, and repression — stems from the correct understanding of those in power that in the fury of women lies the power to change the world.”

I take that as the reactionary minority of men. I don’t see how they can win long-term. That’s a subsection of the entire workforce, where, yes, men hold most of the reins high and low. In so many other fields, it’s not the case, though. It’s also among highly educated people. FAANG Ivy League is modern and the ones where egalitarianism is most likely.

Highly educated groups are more likely to be okay with women making more or less gender equal relationships. By definition, those groups are a minority. There’s a panic among many commentators. What will we do with the men? Who will these women marry? Why should the women have to marry down? Stuff like that.

If the societal argument is for merit, and if the women are putting in more money and time, then I’m not truly concerned about gender inequality inasmuch as freedoms for both sexes–shoutout to the in-betweens–and the best person for the job or the most suitable. It’s fairest. I simply see the numbers showing in favour of women as the overall trend with some holdouts like senior ranks for men, because these changes take time, or in math and engineering because those probably play to male strengths in visuospatial ability.

It has been noted that it’s more about having worked then choosing to stay home for the husband rather than the husband having stay-at-home husbanding as ultimate goal disregarding traditional success altogether. Gender barriers are more prevalent than barriers to merit, so I’m concerned about gender inequality more, but deeper than that, once women have been broadly emancipated, then I’m concerned about the right proportion of talent, profile, and skills to the job. What about specific fields where women are still struggling to make inroads?

“Data from APA’s Center for Workforce Studies show that women make up 76 percent of new psychology doctorates, 74 percent of early career psychologists and 53 percent of the psychology work force… The phenomenon is not unique to psychology. Other fields such as law and education have seen an influx of women as well.”And so on, so, we can speak from an individual career in one field, which isn’t untrue. However, it’s limited in scope and then the reverse case in numerous other broad disciplines. Psychologists and eventually doctors too.

Women are a large minority in undergraduate and doctorate and majority at masters level. What I am getting at: Work for gender equality, now, will necessarily incorporate advocacy for areas in which men and women are disadvantaged in particular areas. If the end goal is 50:50 or 60:40 gender equality all the across the board, as clearly, the focus, now, is on absolute equality in all areas of human life, professional and personal–outside of birth.

However, a more reasonable proposal, if we are aiming for the emancipation of people in multiple areas of life, then why not work for opening the avenues for everyone without force-fitting some arbitrary number on the sexes, genders, and the like? This is a more robust, honest, and noble solution, where people’s natural interests and talents will filter them in a society, appropriately. It is egalitarian, but it is a different rotational orientation.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash