Basically, in today's society, as far as marriage is concerned in the WESTERN world, it's screwed up. As a man, and men of my generation, we kind of look at marriage and we cringe. There are very few benefits to it nowadays. Aside from the Christian ideal of marriage (which sadly, very few people acknowledge anymore in western culture), marriage is somewhat of a joke. There are few, if any, advantages to marriage for men nowadays, and men take ALL the risk. What I'm saying is this: Aside from the thousands of dollars we spend on a ring, assuming we don't get turned down (since that ring is worthless after we buy it), what advantages do we gain by marrying a woman? If you go into a relationship normally, examine what you'd likely already receive. I could move in with a significant other, and I'd still receive all the benefits of a marriage (love, partnership, companionship, sex, financial support, etc). What advantage would I get from marrying that woman? I'd take all the risk based on the divorce laws of today's society. A woman could divorce me on a whim, with no reason whatsoever, and she'd automatically receive half of everything I own, she'd get the kids (if there are any), the house, the car, possibly alimony (to add to my new found financial destruction), and even child-support for the kids that I had no choice but to give up according to a judge. Also, prenuptial agreements do not hold up on most courts, since most judges simply throw them out. Basically, divorce laws in the USA are completely sided with the woman, which is outdated and completely based upon a 100 years ago, before women had the ability to live independently from her husband. It was understandable and needed back then, but nowadays, many women make more money than men, yet men have no way to win in a divorce case. If you want to look deeper into the laws of the western world, MANY laws favor women completely, when it simply is false bravado these days. For instance, NO WOMAN in the USA can rape a man. It is impossible. Why? There are no legal grounds for it. None, whatsoever. A woman cannot be charged with rape, because the rape laws in the USA are specifically worded with the word penis entering a vagina, anus, or mouth. The worst a woman could be charged with, if she raped a man (and the court didn't just throw it out completely) is sexual misconduct. Consider that for a moment. A man raping a woman gets life in prison. A woman raping a man gets one year in prison, at the maximum. Also, sexual harassment laws completely favor women as well, but I won't go further into these things. I think it's safe to say, and completely unarguable to say that women are unfairly represented as victims in most of the laws based on relationships between men and women. Divorce laws are what I specifically care about in this post, however.
What I'm saying is this: Feminism currently has three "waves" or stages that it has gone through. The first-wave was great and completely needed, which dealt with obviously needed things like women's suffrage, the right to vote, etc. The second-wave movement started in the 1980s, which was completely about destroying gender roles, and basically, as a man, I view it as putting women on a pedestal and basically it was all about advancing the power and prestige of rich white women. The third-wave movement is now out, which is basically more lenient to the GLBT community, minority women, and also (somewhat) more about equality than feminism ever was a decade ago. Even still, feminism is not about equality anymore, since no woman in the western world can truly say she is unequal to a man in any way, shape, or form. What the second-wave basically did was destroy all gender roles that were created by God and written about in the Bible, and so we have divorce rates that are skyrocketed. The outcome is creating men like me who are deathly afraid of divorce, and so look at marriage as almost a stupid maneuver to ever allow ourselves to get into. It is just asking for trouble, at least with 90% of all women that I meet nowadays at my age. I still want to get married one day, and I will still take that plunge even though I could possibly destroyed in all ways by whomever I marry, despite if I am faithful, loving, and do everything I am supposed to as a husband. Either way, I will still marry, but my biggest fear in life is divorce, and so I think it needs to be discussed far more openly than most people do, and it is a far more serious matter as well. Nobody wants the word 'marriage' to be destroyed by the gay community with same-sex marriages, but nobody ever seems to realize the real problem with marriage right now is with real, different-sex marriages, the kind that God intended us to have. It is slowly being destroyed, and I simply wonder as men AND women, how we can change ourselves and our outlooks, and how we can fix something that is so obviously broken.
Let me put it his way: I'm 26 years old. I live near Chicago, in the USA. If I met 100 women, 90 of them would all be single mothers. Out of those 90, at least 80 would have been divorced at least once, and many of them would have been divorced multiple times. Out of all those women that were divorced, almost ALL of those divorces were initiated by women. Out of all those women with children, almost all of those women chose to leave the dads and/or they decided those men weren't fit to be their husbands. I'm positive that some of those men were deadbeats, but I'm also positive that not all of them were. It is a simple matter of these women having the freedom to do whatever they please, but those actions all had consequences. What it leaves is men at my age looking around, and what we find are all women who have had little common sense in who they dated, or why they dated these men, and these divorced women also make me wonder if they'd do it again, if I decided I wanted to marry them and make one of them my wife. Would they also divorce me, since they seem to value marriage so little? I'm sure not all would, as I know how to treat them better than probably any man they dated before, but divorce is almost never an action that the man takes anymore. 60 years ago, before women really broke out and fought gender roles, all divorces were ended by men, since women had few options if they decided to leave. Women were either housewives, or they worked at low-paying jobs. Women obviously are better off with what they can do now, but I wonder... Did women not realize the consequences that come along with the freedom they gained through feminism? If you look even at simple relationships, almost ALL relationships are ended by the woman. Sure, the men may be the ones who made the mistakes (although 99% of the time, both parties made horrible mistakes), but women are almost always the ones who break up with the man. It is just simply the way it is. It is not always the case, but the trend supports my theory here, so let's go with it for a few.
My question to women and men, is basically this: What can we do to fix this problem of marriage and divorce?
I recently stumbled across this video, along with the work of Dr Herb Goldberg, which basically is a counter-movement of the radical feminist movements that have raged throughout the 80's and into today's world.
Dr. Herb Goldberg Ph.D and Betty Friedan Part 1 - YouTube
This man is a genius in my eyes, since he explains why feminists became the man-haters they are perceived as (the reasons why they had the rage to begin with), and also how we can fix the issues of today's society. The woman is a well known feminist who also agreed with Dr Goldberg, and they both basically tried to mix their two rights movements together, creating an equality movement rather than one side (man) or the other (female). What they talk about is basically how to change both men and women into gaining the ability to have a lasting relationship, one that is about love and respect, rather than the weak feminine reactor (idealized victorian-era woman) and the super masculine man (still prevalent today, although less so).
I guess I just wonder though... Why is today's society, specifically the idea of marriage, so screwed up? Why have divorce rates risen so much, and why have women taken so few actions to stay in marriage these days? Is it secular culture, or does it have to do with something deeper than that? Obviously, women weren't happy with the way the Bible taught them to be, and so they reacted with rage and anger, which led to the feminist movements. That's all fine and great, but the consequences that go along with that freedom doesn't seem to have dawned on women. It's one of those things where it seems they want their cake and to eat it too.
Maybe I am off base here, but you tell me. Watch the video (there are a ton of parts, but the first video sums things up if you have a short attention span), and tell me what you think!
