Of course it's on the men to adjust, and that's what we see in most men overall. The ones who struggle to find relationships are the men who aren't adjusting. We should figure out why they're not adjusting, not ask the women to give back some of their hard-earned freedoms because some men can't handle it.
The inversion would be if the claim was that a trait of men is causing this maladjustment, but the claim is instead that men are misprioritizing an equal relationship with a woman in favor of career and unequal relationships that they're now struggling to find.
Also I dunno if you missed this quote, but it's firmly discussing actions women are taking that impact these single men:
> Heterosexual women are getting more choosy. Women “don’t want to marry down,” to form a long-term relationship to a man with less education and earnings than herself, said Ronald Levant, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Akron and author of several books on masculinity.
The article also ended on a hopeful note, giving an example of a group of men who do prioritize relationships, with their Man of the Year trophy, saying literally:
> “We treat friendship as a luxury, especially men,” Ritter said. “It’s a necessity.”
It's amazing how easily you skim over the behavior that women don't marry down.
It's always been a selfish behavior void of love, but I suppose that one can find rationalization in needing stability and protection if one is to start a family.
Now, however, as women match earnings or even out-earn the typical guy, they still won't marry down. Which creates selection criteria of an "impossible man". Acceptably attractive, stable high earner, emotionally advanced (yeah, right).
Meanwhile, men do marry down. And none have an ever increasing list of demands.
Just noticing the asymmetry here.
Anyway, men won't emotionally "improve" because that is a strictly female value assessment. We're not broken, we're just different. My girlfriend gives me a daily update of all the ups and downs and gossips in her dealing with colleagues at work. I do not give a shit about any of it, but will pretend to care.
Neither of us are broken, we're different. And that is fine.
> We should figure out why they're not adjusting, not ask the women to give back some of their hard-earned freedoms because some men can't handle it.
No one is asking women to stop having careers, or stop going to college. Rather, my point is that the article treats the women's perspective unquestioningly as reality — men aren't emotionally available enough, and aren't successful enough, and those are facts, not merely biased perspectives of a single gender.
I don't know how to fix this problem. Undoing a century of feminism is a non-starter. But you can't fix this by telling men to be better. They need the same kind of societal consideration and institutional support that women get.
> it's firmly discussing actions women are taking that impact these single men
Sure, it's stating that these are things women do. But the phrasing is neutral at worst. There's no implication that women wanting to "marry up" in a world where most men are now "lower" than them is an unreasonable desire.
> Of course it's on the men to adjust
Why? How? Even if men can somehow just become more emotionally available (assuming that the problem is on the mens' side and not womens' for expecting men to act like women), how do you suggest men fix issues like not being more academically successful as women, or not earning more than them?
Boiling all this down to a single question (I'm curious how you would answer):
How can you possibly reconcile a world where men and women are equal, but women still only want to marry men that are older and more successful than them?
Women can't all "marry up" unless you systematically disadvantage all women, such that for F1, there is a M1 who is of higher whatever (status, income, looks), and so on for F2 and M2, F3 and M3, and so on.
Given the stats on enrollment in colleges, on who is preferred for tenure track in academia, and so on and so forth, well ... that's just not gonna work out.
Correct! Which is in itself an interesting bit that also serves to make the "dating scene" (that feels too small to encapsulate the whole problem) fraught: men are, for want of a better term, thirstier than women are, on average, only extend that slang to far more than just sex. If this is true, and I think it is, this will only leave more men milling about, unmatched, which can lead to a better fulfillment of "marrying up" for women, at the cost of more men remaining unmarried.
Of course, nobody cares about men in and of themselves, so that's not really a problem.
The inversion would be if the claim was that a trait of men is causing this maladjustment, but the claim is instead that men are misprioritizing an equal relationship with a woman in favor of career and unequal relationships that they're now struggling to find.
Also I dunno if you missed this quote, but it's firmly discussing actions women are taking that impact these single men:
> Heterosexual women are getting more choosy. Women “don’t want to marry down,” to form a long-term relationship to a man with less education and earnings than herself, said Ronald Levant, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Akron and author of several books on masculinity.
The article also ended on a hopeful note, giving an example of a group of men who do prioritize relationships, with their Man of the Year trophy, saying literally:
> “We treat friendship as a luxury, especially men,” Ritter said. “It’s a necessity.”