How Men (Purportedly) "Signal Their Suitability"

Men, women, what each supposedly want, and the ever-present Gender Wars.

The Basic Background

If you were to make a list of the biggest factors that are contributing to a supposed “decline” in marriage — which I don’t even think is factually accurate, but is instead a later launch of marriage for many — and the corresponding panic about fertility rate, sadly your list of the reasons would probably be ideological. In absolute and true reality, the main reason for any perceived decline in both “marriage” and “fertility” is that women have more options in the world than they did 70 years ago. That’s the easiest explanation and the one that is often correct. While every situation is different, we often get into the weeds on other shit, including:

• “Men are in decline.”

• “Women are selfish and would rather buy Beyonce tickets and have dogs.”

• “The court system is rigged against men.”

• “People are too fat to get pregnant and their endocrine systems are full of plastics.”

All four of those takes are also true, although in limited quantities — and yet those takes get a bunch of attention because they rile people up. In reality, it’s a question of economics and choices. I do think the decline of men needs to be a bigger topic, but talking too much about the decline of men and the toxicity of some men also got us to a weird political moment where we are now enemies with Canada, so I will table that topic for this post.

A Video

Here are Chris Williamson and Louise Perry discussing this topic:

A lot of coded stuff is happening in this clip. Williamson is a good interviewer and brings decent facts, although he is absolutely “right-leaning” in that he goes on Rogan and smokes cigars and laughs about “Dementia Joe” and similar topics. He is a bro dog and he speaks to a certain class of bro dog, but his following is reflective of doing it in a way that a wide swaths of people can respect or go along with. So, give him his flowers, but understand he is a right-ward bro dog and I am sure some of his audience is deeply “red pill,” which you can tell if you look at the top five or six comments on this video. They are all about the court system and how men take too much risk in getting married nowadays, because “their kids would be taken from them.”

“Bro, She’ll Take My Kids, Bro!”