Thanks for the grats, Feral and bowen! It's not, like, official-official yet, but he already told me that when we go down to Florida next week to see my parents, he's going to have the "Dr. Lokys, I seek your blessing to wed your daughter" talk with my dad, and I think we've finally settled on a ring. (Apparently my dislike of diamonds made it a fucking nightmare to shop for me).
Man, fuck diamonds. Good for you.
Is pixels = wasted pixels? He seemed like good people but I haven't seen him post in forever. Maybe he just doesn't post in the threads I look at.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Is pixels = wasted pixels? He seemed like good people but I haven't seen him post in forever. Maybe he just doesn't post in the threads I look at.
Yep, that's my guy. We both swore off the PA forums a couple of years ago after an especially heated thread in H/A, and he's stayed away ever since. So did I, for a while, but when I quit World of Warcraft cold turkey a couple of months ago, I found I kind of missed having people online to talk to and argue with at any given hour of the day - real-life friends just don't understand if you call them at 3am to share with them your opinion of a book you just finished. And I didn't really want to expend the time and effort integrating myself with a totally new community like fark or reddit, and I hate Facebook, so I came back here, and it's pretty neat to still see so many names that I remember. The PA forums have their faults, but it's a great community overall.
Thanks for the grats, Feral and bowen! It's not, like, official-official yet, but he already told me that when we go down to Florida next week to see my parents, he's going to have the "Dr. Lokys, I seek your blessing to wed your daughter" talk with my dad, and I think we've finally settled on a ring. (Apparently my dislike of diamonds made it a fucking nightmare to shop for me).
Man, fuck diamonds. Good for you.
Is pixels = wasted pixels? He seemed like good people but I haven't seen him post in forever. Maybe he just doesn't post in the threads I look at.
He's the one with the solid color for his avatar, I think.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
People like her destroy any credibility the feminist movement has, and we should do every single fucking thing we can to undo the conditioning that groups and molds people to think like this.
Torture all PR people. Torture the business majors. Crucify them in the streets, using our amazing advances in medical technology to ensure that they live to serve as an example to future generations. FUCK HEGEMONY!
Is pixels = wasted pixels? He seemed like good people but I haven't seen him post in forever. Maybe he just doesn't post in the threads I look at.
Yep, that's my guy. We both swore off the PA forums a couple of years ago after an especially heated thread in H/A, and he's stayed away ever since. So did I, for a while, but when I quit World of Warcraft cold turkey a couple of months ago, I found I kind of missed having people online to talk to and argue with at any given hour of the day - real-life friends just don't understand if you call them at 3am to share with them your opinion of a book you just finished. And I didn't really want to expend the time and effort integrating myself with a totally new community like fark or reddit, and I hate Facebook, so I came back here, and it's pretty neat to still see so many names that I remember. The PA forums have their faults, but it's a great community overall.
Cool. Glad to know he's doing okay.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
People like her destroy any credibility the feminist movement has, and we should do every single fucking thing we can to undo the conditioning that groups and molds people to think like this.
Torture all PR people. Torture the business majors. Crucify them in the streets, using our amazing advances in medical technology to ensure that they live to serve as an example to future generations. FUCK HEGEMONY!
She isn't a feminist.
She's a fellow at the creepy-looking Manhattan Institute.
She believes that she is, and her remarks are associated with feminism, and a "feminist" character that any real feminist should step up and disavow immediately. The feminist movement needs to disassociate itself from people like her if they want to be taken seriously.
Man I enjoy all the things they attribute to neckbeards, and I make money, and can support what family I do have.
WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?
You OBVIOUSLY only live a successful life because you want to prove the validity of your worthless lifestyle. Therefore all of the credit for your hard earned work belongs to the people who were calling you worthless, because you are worthless, even today.
Edith Upwards on
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
She believes that she is, and her remarks are associated with feminism, and a "feminist" character that any real feminist should step up and disavow immediately. The feminist movement needs to disassociate itself from people like her if they want to be taken seriously.
Man I enjoy all the things they attribute to neckbeards, and I make money, and can support what family I do have.
WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?
You OBVIOUSLY only live a successful life because you want to prove the validity of your worthless lifestyle. Therefore all of the credit for your hard earned work belongs to the people who were calling you worthless, because you are worthless, even today.
Every discussion of her I've ever seen in Feminist circles has pretty much disavowed her. I'm not really sure what else you want besides NOW taking out billboards proclaiming she isn't a feminist.
People like her destroy any credibility the feminist movement has, and we should do every single fucking thing we can to undo the conditioning that groups and molds people to think like this.
Torture all PR people. Torture the business majors. Crucify them in the streets, using our amazing advances in medical technology to ensure that they live to serve as an example to future generations. FUCK HEGEMONY!
She isn't a feminist.
She's a fellow at the creepy-looking Manhattan Institute.
I don't understand how anyone reading any quotes from her or her book could think she is a feminist.
She is arguing that women need to get married and have kids in their twenties and the only reason women aren't doing this is because men are refusing to grow up and playing video games instead. It is entirely traditional misogynistic bullshit except that how she has framed her argument is highlighting how misogyny hurts men as well. While pointing out that misogyny harms everyone and not just women is a feminist thing, I think this author is doing it accidentally. And she seems to be quite serious about promoting the misogyny and its harm to both men and women.
Kistra on
Animal Crossing: City Folk Lissa in Filmore 3179-9580-0076
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
She believes that she is, and her remarks are associated with feminism, and a "feminist" character that any real feminist should step up and disavow immediately. The feminist movement needs to disassociate itself from people like her if they want to be taken seriously.
Who is associating her with feminism? You? That's hardly feminism's fault!
Look, I have banned some genuinely awful people from this forum. Would it be fair for me to expect you to scrape and bow and plead with me that you aren't like them because you are also a poster here? How would that be fair? What purpose would it serve?
She believes that she is, and her remarks are associated with feminism, and a "feminist" character that any real feminist should step up and disavow immediately. The feminist movement needs to disassociate itself from people like her if they want to be taken seriously.
Man I enjoy all the things they attribute to neckbeards, and I make money, and can support what family I do have.
WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?
You OBVIOUSLY only live a successful life because you want to prove the validity of your worthless lifestyle. Therefore all of the credit for your hard earned work belongs to the people who were calling you worthless, because you are worthless, even today.
Why would anyone working at a conservative think tank think they are a feminist?
Can you find a quote where she calls herself a feminist?
Kistra on
Animal Crossing: City Folk Lissa in Filmore 3179-9580-0076
People like her destroy any credibility the feminist movement has, and we should do every single fucking thing we can to undo the conditioning that groups and molds people to think like this.
Torture all PR people. Torture the business majors. Crucify them in the streets, using our amazing advances in medical technology to ensure that they live to serve as an example to future generations. FUCK HEGEMONY!
She isn't a feminist.
She's a fellow at the creepy-looking Manhattan Institute.
Seriously, the only people who see her as a feminist are those with an agenda (i.e. the Wall Street Journal editorial page) or silly uninformed geese (i.e. readers of the aforementioned.)
She believes that she is, and her remarks are associated with feminism, and a "feminist" character that any real feminist should step up and disavow immediately. The feminist movement needs to disassociate itself from people like her if they want to be taken seriously.
Who is associating her with feminism? You? That's hardly feminism's fault!
Look, I have banned some genuinely awful people from this forum. Would it be fair for me to expect you to scrape and bow and plead with me that you aren't like them because you are also a poster here? How would that be fair? What purpose would it serve?
You... you mean I'm not supposed to be sending you "Dear jacobkosh, benevolent overlord of D&D, I praise your name this morn and pray that you will deign to grant me the gift of looking upon your forums, and further, contributing to the chaos and madness which you must peruse and mete out judgement upon every day. Love Forar" PMs?
Alt post: genuinely awf... you leave me out of this!
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
People like her destroy any credibility the feminist movement has, and we should do every single fucking thing we can to undo the conditioning that groups and molds people to think like this.
Torture all PR people. Torture the business majors. Crucify them in the streets, using our amazing advances in medical technology to ensure that they live to serve as an example to future generations. FUCK HEGEMONY!
She isn't a feminist.
She's a fellow at the creepy-looking Manhattan Institute.
Jacob is absolutely right. We can stop the feminist bashing right here. She is not a feminist, she is in no way identified with the feminist movement, and her ideals actually reinforce patriarchy something fierce. Seriously, no feminist would ever argue for strict and frankly insulting gender roles as a method for relieving the psychotension of being a "male" or whatever that even means.
Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud on
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kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
She believes that she is, and her remarks are associated with feminism, and a "feminist" character that any real feminist should step up and disavow immediately. The feminist movement needs to disassociate itself from people like her if they want to be taken seriously.
Who is associating her with feminism? You? That's hardly feminism's fault!
Look, I have banned some genuinely awful people from this forum. Would it be fair for me to expect you to scrape and bow and plead with me that you aren't like them because you are also a poster here? How would that be fair? What purpose would it serve?
Dude, she's part of the manhattan fucking institute. It's a right-wing think thank whose agenda is to return us to the 1950s. How the hell can the "feminist movement" associate or disassociate themselves from anyone when it's a conglomerate mass itself? Those people have been claiming the mantle of feminism since phyllis schaffly, that "true feminism" liberates women by putting them in stable domestic relationships and enforcing gender rules. arbeit macht frei, gender roles make you free, whatever.
kaliyama on
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
Is pixels = wasted pixels? He seemed like good people but I haven't seen him post in forever. Maybe he just doesn't post in the threads I look at.
Yep, that's my guy. We both swore off the PA forums a couple of years ago after an especially heated thread in H/A, and he's stayed away ever since. So did I, for a while, but when I quit World of Warcraft cold turkey a couple of months ago, I found I kind of missed having people online to talk to and argue with at any given hour of the day - real-life friends just don't understand if you call them at 3am to share with them your opinion of a book you just finished. And I didn't really want to expend the time and effort integrating myself with a totally new community like fark or reddit, and I hate Facebook, so I came back here, and it's pretty neat to still see so many names that I remember. The PA forums have their faults, but it's a great community overall.
I am absolutely stealing this the next time someone inquires as to why I post on a webcomic forum.
"true feminism" liberates women by putting them in stable domestic relationships and enforcing gender rules. arbeit macht frei, gender roles make you free, whatever.
This is why this shit needs to be disavowed and disassociated on a scale much larger than as is happening now.
And she DOES think that she's a feminist. She does. All of the people like this do.
Edith Upwards on
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
"true feminism" liberates women by putting them in stable domestic relationships and enforcing gender rules. arbeit macht frei, gender roles make you free, whatever.
This is why this shit needs to be disavowed and disassociated on a scale much larger than as is happening now.
And she DOES think that she's a feminist. She does. All of the people like this do.
While I'm inclined to agree there's something important in her argument, I'm not going to jump to her conclusions.
It does seem a bit odd--yes anecdotal--that my male friends tend to be homebound for longer stints of time than my female friends. However, there may be other reasons for this than 'not growing up'.
"true feminism" liberates women by putting them in stable domestic relationships and enforcing gender rules. arbeit macht frei, gender roles make you free, whatever.
This is why this shit needs to be disavowed and disassociated on a scale much larger than as is happening now.
And she DOES think that she's a feminist. She does. All of the people like this do.
How?
Read Kaliyama's quote.
These people believe that women deviate from the gender roles they are assigned because men want them to do that.
Edith Upwards on
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
"true feminism" liberates women by putting them in stable domestic relationships and enforcing gender rules. arbeit macht frei, gender roles make you free, whatever.
This is why this shit needs to be disavowed and disassociated on a scale much larger than as is happening now.
And she DOES think that she's a feminist. She does. All of the people like this do.
How?
Read Kaliyama's quote.
These people believe that women act the way they do now*, because men want them to do that. Much like "christian" "feminists" believe that women only deviate from the gender roles they are assigned because male sinners(and SATAN) want them to.
*Ie, like human beings with free will and shit.
I was referring to how they should disavow her. They currently deny her anytime she's brought up. I'm curious as to what you think they need to do beyond that.
While I'm inclined to agree there's something important in her argument, I'm not going to jump to her conclusions.
It does seem a bit odd--yes anecdotal--that my male friends tend to be homebound for longer stints of time than my female friends. However, there may be other reasons for this than 'not growing up'.
I live at home because the only reason for me to move out is, essentially, pride. Which strikes me as an absolutely ridiculous reason to be throwing $500-700 per month away on rent instead of putting it into savings. Of course because I've been saving so much every month I could easily move out tomorrow without really denting my savings including completely furnishing a place.
Perhaps saying "she's not a Feminist" is potentially confusing because of how nebulous perception of the feminist movement is. Also, as has been pointed out, the author apparently believes herself to be a feminist.
Saying "She's a hardcore social conservative" paints a much clearer picture in my mind, for example.
While I'm inclined to agree there's something important in her argument, I'm not going to jump to her conclusions.
It does seem a bit odd--yes anecdotal--that my male friends tend to be homebound for longer stints of time than my female friends. However, there may be other reasons for this than 'not growing up'.
There are vast swaths of reasons. One huge one is the ever-increasing scope of the credentialing process, which keeps ramping up the amount of educational attainment you need to get a good job.
Back in the 50s and 60s, you could get married at 18 because you didn't need anything more than a high school education to have a good middle-class suburban life. You got your diploma, you started working at the GM plant in town, you popped the question to the high school girl you knocked up on prom night, then within a year of graduation you had a good union job and a devoted wife and a 20-year mortgage and a baby crawling around underfoot, and you could rest easy knowing that God was in His heaven and He loved America and everything was going to be great.
Now, though, you can't do that. Manufacturing jobs are gone, and whether you think globalization and outsourcing are good things or not, the sharp decrease in available blue-collar employment means that with very few exceptions, the only job a high school diploma will get you these days is shift manager at a fast food joint. And if you want a white-collar job, you need a university degree, because such jobs - rightly or not - are thought to be more intellectually demanding than labour-intensive jobs like factory work, and the standard way to test intellectual ability is higher education. So, in the 70s and 80s, people started delaying marriage by a few years, so they could go to university and get a bachelor's in engineering, and get a job at Exxon Mobil or Dow Chemical - and you would meet a nice girl at university who was doing a BA in English, and you'd get married, and you'd live in a newly-built condo on the outskirts of town, and she would teach at the local high school for a couple of years before she had kids.
But then it's into the 2000s, and it just keeps getting harder to find a good job, because even if you have the degree, so does everyone else. So what happens? You borrow money from your parents or the government or a private lender, you go on to grad school, and you spend a few years doing a Master's degree, which has two advantages: first, it keeps you out of the job market for a little while, and maybe by the time you're done the economy will have picked up; secondly, once you do get your MA/MS/MBA, you'll be more attractive to employers than someone with just a BA/BS, because you will have spent more time going through the credentialing process. You don't want to get married while you're still in school because you can't afford to support a family on the miserable stipend the university pays you to be a TA or a residence advisor, so marriage gets put off for a few more years, and you hope that maybe you meet someone in grad school - or maybe through an online dating site after you graduate, because you need to read about 200 pages of material every goddamned night, and that just doesn't leave you with time for much else. Then when you do graduate, you get a job with some dot-com ecommerce startup, and they have a foosball table in the conference room and an ironically retro Pacman machine beside the espresso maker and the CEO tells you to call him Danny, and you start thinking about finding a girl to settle down with because you think you're finally financially stable. Then a year later the startup goes bankrupt and you're back to looking for a job, but this time you're competing with all the kids who were a year behind you in grad school and just got out, so you can't find shit.
And now it's 2011, and the economy is in the goddamned toilet, and even people who have Master's degrees are having a hell of a time finding work in their chosen fields, which puts marriage even further from their minds.
Apparently, being stuck in this position makes you a dimwitted regressive manchild who refuses to grow up and get married because you're too busy playing video games and mooching off your parents while indulging your slothful state of pre-adulthood.
God, the more I read this shit, the angrier it makes me. Her entire argument consists of attributing a selfish, individualistic cause ("they are lazy immature children who would rather play video games than grow up!") to an observed effect ("men are getting married later"), when the actual cause is, you know, a vast societal shift in education and employment that has been taking place over the past 60+ years.
The median age of first marriage was at its lowest in the 50s and 60s, and it has been increasing ever since. Educational attainment has also been rising steadily: undergraduate enrollment increased from the 70s into the 80s, and graduate enrollment started climbing sharply in the 90s and 00s. Jobs are getting harder to find and are requiring higher levels of education, which means people are staying in school longer, which means they're getting married later.
But numbers are hard: it's much easier (and sells more books) to just claim that all men are slacker Peter Pan wannabes lounging around the basement with their Halos and their Marios.
Back in the 50s and 60s, you could get married at 18 because you didn't need anything more than a high school education to have a good middle-class suburban life. You got your diploma, you started working at the GM plant in town, you popped the question to the high school girl you knocked up on prom night, then within a year of graduation you had a good union job and a devoted wife and a 20-year mortgage and a baby crawling around underfoot, and you could rest easy knowing that God was in His heaven and He loved America and everything was going to be great.
And I think we could make a pretty solid argument that this was a historical rarity, due largely to the US's strong economic growth at the time. As Fuzzy and myself and others have mentioned, single families living in detached housing starting from the age of 19 is by no means universal. I think that the expectation that young people go straight from school to self-sufficiency (whether school ends at 18 or 22) is unrealistic.
Also, are people tired of me pimping this book yet?
I know I bring up at least once every couple of weeks.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Posts
Man, fuck diamonds. Good for you.
Is pixels = wasted pixels? He seemed like good people but I haven't seen him post in forever. Maybe he just doesn't post in the threads I look at.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Yep, that's my guy. We both swore off the PA forums a couple of years ago after an especially heated thread in H/A, and he's stayed away ever since. So did I, for a while, but when I quit World of Warcraft cold turkey a couple of months ago, I found I kind of missed having people online to talk to and argue with at any given hour of the day - real-life friends just don't understand if you call them at 3am to share with them your opinion of a book you just finished. And I didn't really want to expend the time and effort integrating myself with a totally new community like fark or reddit, and I hate Facebook, so I came back here, and it's pretty neat to still see so many names that I remember. The PA forums have their faults, but it's a great community overall.
He's the one with the solid color for his avatar, I think.
I wish I could hate you to death.
Also this is making me hungry.
Torture all PR people. Torture the business majors. Crucify them in the streets, using our amazing advances in medical technology to ensure that they live to serve as an example to future generations. FUCK HEGEMONY!
Cool. Glad to know he's doing okay.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
She isn't a feminist.
She's a fellow at the creepy-looking Manhattan Institute.
You OBVIOUSLY only live a successful life because you want to prove the validity of your worthless lifestyle. Therefore all of the credit for your hard earned work belongs to the people who were calling you worthless, because you are worthless, even today.
Every discussion of her I've ever seen in Feminist circles has pretty much disavowed her. I'm not really sure what else you want besides NOW taking out billboards proclaiming she isn't a feminist.
I don't understand how anyone reading any quotes from her or her book could think she is a feminist.
She is arguing that women need to get married and have kids in their twenties and the only reason women aren't doing this is because men are refusing to grow up and playing video games instead. It is entirely traditional misogynistic bullshit except that how she has framed her argument is highlighting how misogyny hurts men as well. While pointing out that misogyny harms everyone and not just women is a feminist thing, I think this author is doing it accidentally. And she seems to be quite serious about promoting the misogyny and its harm to both men and women.
Who is associating her with feminism? You? That's hardly feminism's fault!
Look, I have banned some genuinely awful people from this forum. Would it be fair for me to expect you to scrape and bow and plead with me that you aren't like them because you are also a poster here? How would that be fair? What purpose would it serve?
Can you find a quote where she calls herself a feminist?
Seriously, the only people who see her as a feminist are those with an agenda (i.e. the Wall Street Journal editorial page) or silly uninformed geese (i.e. readers of the aforementioned.)
You... you mean I'm not supposed to be sending you "Dear jacobkosh, benevolent overlord of D&D, I praise your name this morn and pray that you will deign to grant me the gift of looking upon your forums, and further, contributing to the chaos and madness which you must peruse and mete out judgement upon every day. Love Forar" PMs?
Alt post: genuinely awf... you leave me out of this!
Rigorous Scholarship
yeNO.
No.
... yes.
Dude, she's part of the manhattan fucking institute. It's a right-wing think thank whose agenda is to return us to the 1950s. How the hell can the "feminist movement" associate or disassociate themselves from anyone when it's a conglomerate mass itself? Those people have been claiming the mantle of feminism since phyllis schaffly, that "true feminism" liberates women by putting them in stable domestic relationships and enforcing gender rules. arbeit macht frei, gender roles make you free, whatever.
I am absolutely stealing this the next time someone inquires as to why I post on a webcomic forum.
This is why this shit needs to be disavowed and disassociated on a scale much larger than as is happening now.
And she DOES think that she's a feminist. She does. All of the people like this do.
How?
It does seem a bit odd--yes anecdotal--that my male friends tend to be homebound for longer stints of time than my female friends. However, there may be other reasons for this than 'not growing up'.
Read Kaliyama's quote.
These people believe that women deviate from the gender roles they are assigned because men want them to do that.
I was referring to how they should disavow her. They currently deny her anytime she's brought up. I'm curious as to what you think they need to do beyond that.
I live at home because the only reason for me to move out is, essentially, pride. Which strikes me as an absolutely ridiculous reason to be throwing $500-700 per month away on rent instead of putting it into savings. Of course because I've been saving so much every month I could easily move out tomorrow without really denting my savings including completely furnishing a place.
People in other countries usually don't move out until their early thirties. Male or female.
Saying "She's a hardcore social conservative" paints a much clearer picture in my mind, for example.
There are vast swaths of reasons. One huge one is the ever-increasing scope of the credentialing process, which keeps ramping up the amount of educational attainment you need to get a good job.
Back in the 50s and 60s, you could get married at 18 because you didn't need anything more than a high school education to have a good middle-class suburban life. You got your diploma, you started working at the GM plant in town, you popped the question to the high school girl you knocked up on prom night, then within a year of graduation you had a good union job and a devoted wife and a 20-year mortgage and a baby crawling around underfoot, and you could rest easy knowing that God was in His heaven and He loved America and everything was going to be great.
Now, though, you can't do that. Manufacturing jobs are gone, and whether you think globalization and outsourcing are good things or not, the sharp decrease in available blue-collar employment means that with very few exceptions, the only job a high school diploma will get you these days is shift manager at a fast food joint. And if you want a white-collar job, you need a university degree, because such jobs - rightly or not - are thought to be more intellectually demanding than labour-intensive jobs like factory work, and the standard way to test intellectual ability is higher education. So, in the 70s and 80s, people started delaying marriage by a few years, so they could go to university and get a bachelor's in engineering, and get a job at Exxon Mobil or Dow Chemical - and you would meet a nice girl at university who was doing a BA in English, and you'd get married, and you'd live in a newly-built condo on the outskirts of town, and she would teach at the local high school for a couple of years before she had kids.
But then it's into the 2000s, and it just keeps getting harder to find a good job, because even if you have the degree, so does everyone else. So what happens? You borrow money from your parents or the government or a private lender, you go on to grad school, and you spend a few years doing a Master's degree, which has two advantages: first, it keeps you out of the job market for a little while, and maybe by the time you're done the economy will have picked up; secondly, once you do get your MA/MS/MBA, you'll be more attractive to employers than someone with just a BA/BS, because you will have spent more time going through the credentialing process. You don't want to get married while you're still in school because you can't afford to support a family on the miserable stipend the university pays you to be a TA or a residence advisor, so marriage gets put off for a few more years, and you hope that maybe you meet someone in grad school - or maybe through an online dating site after you graduate, because you need to read about 200 pages of material every goddamned night, and that just doesn't leave you with time for much else. Then when you do graduate, you get a job with some dot-com ecommerce startup, and they have a foosball table in the conference room and an ironically retro Pacman machine beside the espresso maker and the CEO tells you to call him Danny, and you start thinking about finding a girl to settle down with because you think you're finally financially stable. Then a year later the startup goes bankrupt and you're back to looking for a job, but this time you're competing with all the kids who were a year behind you in grad school and just got out, so you can't find shit.
And now it's 2011, and the economy is in the goddamned toilet, and even people who have Master's degrees are having a hell of a time finding work in their chosen fields, which puts marriage even further from their minds.
Apparently, being stuck in this position makes you a dimwitted regressive manchild who refuses to grow up and get married because you're too busy playing video games and mooching off your parents while indulging your slothful state of pre-adulthood.
God, the more I read this shit, the angrier it makes me. Her entire argument consists of attributing a selfish, individualistic cause ("they are lazy immature children who would rather play video games than grow up!") to an observed effect ("men are getting married later"), when the actual cause is, you know, a vast societal shift in education and employment that has been taking place over the past 60+ years.
The median age of first marriage was at its lowest in the 50s and 60s, and it has been increasing ever since. Educational attainment has also been rising steadily: undergraduate enrollment increased from the 70s into the 80s, and graduate enrollment started climbing sharply in the 90s and 00s. Jobs are getting harder to find and are requiring higher levels of education, which means people are staying in school longer, which means they're getting married later.
But numbers are hard: it's much easier (and sells more books) to just claim that all men are slacker Peter Pan wannabes lounging around the basement with their Halos and their Marios.
And I think we could make a pretty solid argument that this was a historical rarity, due largely to the US's strong economic growth at the time. As Fuzzy and myself and others have mentioned, single families living in detached housing starting from the age of 19 is by no means universal. I think that the expectation that young people go straight from school to self-sufficiency (whether school ends at 18 or 22) is unrealistic.
Also, are people tired of me pimping this book yet?
I know I bring up at least once every couple of weeks.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I was just gonna buy it.
On a credit card.
I was waiting for someone to go there.
Wohoo. I love Chipolte, single, decent occupation currently, and black to boot!
She'd have me quarinteened ASAP.
You know, credit cards aren't inherently evil.
39% interest rates are.