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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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Their money isn’t “feed the family” money, so they get to think of work as fun, as a calling, as almost a hobby.

May I ask what women you know like this? Because the women around me working are damn well helping to keep the family going; one co-worker is saving huge amounts of her wages to pay her son's college fees, for example. If you're going for a mortgage, you better have a two-income family. And there are some of us who are still single who work to pay our own bills.

While I think men may have a hard time of it today, the amount of pure whining and pussing on here makes me want to tell you all to grow a pair and man up. Not very sympathetic of me, I realise, but I had a sort of male-brained upbringing so I'm not the nurturing, supportive, "Oh Clive you are so wonderful and manly and I adore you" type of female.

Before I start let me preface with I love my wife, none of the following is malicious and I don't think these things are fully conscious. I do know women who are better at finances then their husbands. So people don't think she is a bum she came in to the relationship with about 200k of equity in a house, she brags to everyone how awesome I am with finances, she likes to help on major projects around the house or organize things while I'm working on the vehicles, and I would be 100% fine being the breadwinner if she decided to be a stay at home mom.

She struggles mentally keeping track of cash flows and balances. Mostly it's little things that aren't a big deal. Like when we were dating we went to Costco, spent about $100 dollars, and I had forgotten my wallet. While walking to the car she reminded me to transfer her half the bill. During that period in our relationship I had regularly covered full shopping runs and I had been picking up the tab of our weekly dates to the tune of $75-$100 a week. One time she saw the bill and was shocked that that's how much we'd been spending. A few months before I'd floated her $8k to get her into grad school before the student loans came in.

When we got married we agreed to combine finances but didn't close her bank account because there were some bills tied to it and so she could have some autonomy. The one time I put up some resistance was when she wanted a couple grand because she felt she'd spent thousands more than me on the wedding and transferring her a couple grand would be fair. This was hard for me because it meant I was going to have to dip in to the emergency fund for the first time in years. She suggested we make a spreadsheet only to find that I'd spent thousands more than her. She polished off her $20k inheritance before we got married because she wanted to have some fun before the wedding saying "it was her money" (I had never asked for justification or protested).

She recently suggested that we should follow Dave Ramsey and become debt free by paying off $60k in student loans from a couple failed attempts at graduate degrees by liquidating the emergency fund and the rest of the crypto, all of which I had accumulated before we started dating. She recently talked about how after kids she wants some cosmetic surgery. I remarked that was going to take awhile to save up for, and she said not to worry she'd save up the money. Apart from the inheritance her cash flow has been negative for years and I don't see how that's going to change. She has lamented how she is doing a disproportionate share of the housework, I told her to wait until I get home and I'll help. She doesn't like it being dirty in the 2 to 4 hour difference between when she gets off work and I get off work. I also leave for work an hour and a half before she does.

Good on you. I know plenty of each type. The difference between men and women is that the above-described kind of economic behavior tuned for self-actualization instead of for supporting the family, especially with kids involved, is widely unacceptable for men who have not previously saved up large stores of wealth, but is widely accepted for women.

Of course you can deny this, and maybe your personal experience when it comes to this differs greatly from mine, but from where I stand, given what I see, what MaiqTheTrue wrote above is 100% on the mark.

While I think men may have a hard time of it today, the amount of pure whining and pussing on here makes me want to tell you all to grow a pair and man up.

Well, don't. Men don't get to say that to each other here, and neither do you.

I’m not suggesting that they don’t work hard or that the money doesn’t go to family finances. What I’m suggesting is that since they are not the primary breadwinners, women get to think of the fringe benefits of the jobs they want, whether or not the environment is nice, whether or not the work is fulfilling or fun. They get to decide if they want a promotion at work. And they can generally do so because if they don’t make as much money as they possibly can, they have the income of a higher earning man to fall back on. The difference isn’t work ethic but job selection, and whether or not they push hard for promotions or job hop for better wages. The men I know have to prioritize their careers, work longer than is healthy, push very hard for training and plumb assignments and promotions, and are always looking for more money. Not because they want to, but because as the primary breadwinner if they don’t get as much money as they can, the family suffers.

Women as a whole don’t tend to do that. They aren’t hunting for better paying options, they don’t job hunt or put themselves in the limelight looking for promotions or assignments to pad the resume. They don’t tend to spend their free time trying to upskill so they can move up. They sort of find a pleasant environment with people and tasks they like and rest there until they retire.

the amount of pure whining and pussing on here makes me want to tell you all to grow a pair and man up.

You know. I was on the volunteer mod page, and this post was in the queue - but it was initially anonymous and I didn't know who it was from. I was baaaasically leaning toward marking it as Neutral anyway, or Bad at worst, but then when I clicked on the context button and saw that it was from you (a woman), I suddenly felt quite strongly that I shouldn't mark the post as anything worse than Neutral! I don't think I'm the only man who would have that reaction.

I don't know what conclusions everyone wants to draw from that, but, it may be relevant to the current topic.

I would have no such qualms myself. I don't just advocate for equality of opportunity between the sexes, I also embody it to the best of my ability.

Well it felt like something that came prior to conscious deliberation or propositional knowledge. A reflex. One that can easily be overridden, but, the reflex is still there.

Could just be the WAW effect. Or it could be that it strikes me as weaksauce to call for mod action against a woman who’s telling you to man up.

I don't mean to say that I reported it (I didn't), it simply seems utterly irrelevant to me whether it was a man or woman making that statement. Well, not exactly, because I think women have less insight into male affairs (and vice-versa), but you get my point.

Women still bring in disproportionately less than men in two-income households and work fewer hours. And in the jobs they do work, they have a higher job satisfaction than men do.

There are always tradeoffs that people make when choosing if they want to work and what job to take. Men tend to trade their time and happiness for more money; women tend to trade money for more time and happiness.

Looking at my own life, I know of multiple women who gave up high paying, high stress careers to be yoga instructors, writers, and life coaches. I know of literally no men who have done the same. That's not to say that all women have that option, but at the same time more women than men do.

Well, then - since we espouse equity, let's see if any government will fund initiatives to lower women's job satisfaction, a goal I consider eminently more achievable by a government than improving men's job satisfaction.

A woman not having sympathy for men is a very woman thing that has very little to do with upbringing. Women naturally ingroup other women and outgroup men and a woman that doesn't do this is exceedingly rare. The only open example I know of is Karen Straughan.

Generally the type of sympathy men get from women is a sort of backhanded sympathy. Where it exists more to excuse the actions of women and any negative consequences those actions may have, and to alleviate any negative emotional pressure. Like the classic 'You're a nice guy, don't worry, you'll find someone, there's someone out there for everyone'. It's completely vapid and empty as anything else.

Listening in on two married co-workers talking about their home finances, both had the situation that their money was the families money, the wife's money was her money. And they could both share stories of how hostile and defensive their wives got if they ever questioned where 'her' money was going or if it could be better spent somewhere else. That's on top of stories from former co-workers working as fishermen , all of whom had stories to share on either their own former partners or a shipmates where all the money that had earned on tour was gone by the time they got to shore. One particularly inventive spouse had, as a way to make amends for wasting all the money on clothes and alcohol, wasted what was left of it on buying the dude an Xbox as present for when he got home.

It's about 20% of women and ~0% of men in my experience. For example (details slightly modified):

  • Alice went to college, got a professional degree, and now works part-time as a pilates instructor after her husband became a manager

  • Betty worked full time as a physiotherapist, then switched to part-time reiki after marrying an accountant

  • Carol may not have stepped down in workload, but she's working part-time at an NGO while her husband is a civil engineer

  • Denise and Evelyn both stepped back from professional work to spend more time on their art while their husbands worked full time

That's from a single, constrained pool of a few dozen people (half men, half women). If you extend the criteria to taking reduced (but still "full time") workloads and regular sabbaticals, then there are another several women and two men.