Is it just me who noticed a possible messaging discrepancy? The articles covers what women have been taught ("world is your oyster", etc.) and how that has affected their eventual search, yet glosses over what men have been conditioned with all this time.
Suppose there's "messaging" disconnect? Women in this generation (and last's) have increasingly been conditioned and taught by their parents and various peers and mediums to be independent, pursue careers, and become all they can be. What has changed with how men are raised? Maybe they're still getting the same traditional message and lessons that they are meant to be the head of household, to provide, to find a woman who will bear their children (and not a whole lot else)? Then it would make sense that men and women will have almost diametrically opposed POV's and not find common ground?
Messaging for men in the mainstream media seems to be "do whatever will make women happy". Note how this article, while being surprisingly equitable in at least considering men's point of view, has a completely different attitude towards resentment in men and women.
Women who dated in their 20s and want to marry in their 30s are resentful of men who now want to date. Meanwhile, men who were unable to find love in their 20s now want to date in their 30s. They grew resentful when they couldn't find love, much as 30-something women now do. I see a lot of symmetry here.
However, when resentful women say "these men are assholes", that is taken at face value: it's obvious that these men are indeed assholes, and that these women are being wronged. On the other hand, resentful men are called misogynists and brutes, and what they really think ("these women are sluts") is considered unfit for print.
It seems hypocritical, and I don't think it's conducive to improving things.
>However, when resentful women say "these men are assholes", that is taken at face value: it's obvious that these men are indeed assholes, and that these women are being wronged. On the other hand, resentful men are called misogynists and brutes, and what they really think ("these women are sluts") is considered unfit for print.
Of course it's unfit for print. Those men are looking to date around, aren't they? They're looking to slut it up, so they've got no right whatsoever to look down on someone for doing or having done the same damn thing.
Reverse Disclosure: I'm engaged and have been "off the market" for so long I've stopped giving a damn.
Just as the women who want to settle down have no right to complain about the men who want to date around, just as the women did before. Yet we have respectable newspapers calling those men assholes.
I'm honestly puzzled at how someone could fail to see the symmetry even after it has been laid out for them. The double standard must have been hammered really deeply into your psyche.
What double-standard? If a woman actually refers to a man as an asshole because he prefers to date around, she's being a jerk.
However, I completely disregard what "respectable newspapers" or magazines print in their Trends or Culture sections, because frankly I stopped regarding them as anything except daily reflections of the collective mind of the wannabe-intellectual population who can think precisely one layer deep into things and no more. "Respectable newspapers" are not where you think original thoughts, they're where you keep score in the public ideological battle between existing thoughts.
Admittedly, I've known some very, very smart journalists, but almost uniformly their format and their funding sources keep them from conveying anything very deep or appreciate of reality's subtleties to the public. Cheap, meme-dense pap it is, then!
Suppose there's "messaging" disconnect? Women in this generation (and last's) have increasingly been conditioned and taught by their parents and various peers and mediums to be independent, pursue careers, and become all they can be. What has changed with how men are raised? Maybe they're still getting the same traditional message and lessons that they are meant to be the head of household, to provide, to find a woman who will bear their children (and not a whole lot else)? Then it would make sense that men and women will have almost diametrically opposed POV's and not find common ground?