Jonathan Birge

If you want a glimpse into the acute adjustment disorder Western society appears to be experiencing in the wake of the sexual revolution, read the following article from The Times. Actually, just skim the article, which is fairly poor journalism, but read the comments (or at least a few of the hundred) that follow it. It’s an interesting glimpse into the undercurrent of anger and resentment that seems to be growing among an upcoming generation stuck with the remains of a culture dismantled by second wave feminists, who had a lot to say about what was wrong, but who offered few alternatives to what they destroyed beyond entitlements and unconstrained self-indulgence. Political correctness, that enabling invention of the boomer generation that has provided effective cover fire for their feckless social engineering, keeps much of the backlash out of view. But the pressure is starting to build, and the steam occasionally vents here and there.

I’m not sure entirely where I fall on all of this; for all the excesses of the sexual revolution, there were certainly valid reasons prompting it. Obviously, I wouldn’t suggest we go back to having women beholden to their husbands for their financial survival. But one thing that is clear is that this rancor does not bode well. What will come of a society that has had its social institutions so upheaved—with nothing offered to fill the void—that large numbers of men and women are deciding to avoid commitment and the disciplines of family? Can you call a movement a success if a by product of it is that its adherents stop reproducing?

From the article:

Men are like eggs. They must hatch or go bad. I came to this conclusion after seeing in the new year with a gang of university friends and hearing one of them, a single guy of 35 called Jamie, declare with complete sincerity that his resolution for 2008 was not to get a girlfriend…

Where have all the men gone? Instead, we have an overload of man-boys – which leaves a generation of single, thirtysomething women who are their natural mates bewildered. I am one of those women.

This is pretty well-worn ground, the stuff of prime time network comedies. All I expected to find by way of reader comment was a few pats on the back from her fellow members of the Sisterhood. I was surprised instead to find hundreds of angry comments along the lines of this:

Women complained in the 60-70s about equality, oppression etc, let’s not forget during this time men went to war in vietnam, no woman has ever been forced to go to war. But still it was women who claimed being oppressed not the men who got blown up in the jungle and devoured by mosquitos and slowly killed by agent orange. the men were draftees, they had no choice.

Today women have the freedom they asked for, “women need men like fish needs a bicycle”, women this famous phrase was coined by your sisters, please ahere to it. You made your bed, now sleep in it. The bed is exactly the shape you wished it to be.

Men are useless for women, you told us for decades, do not complain if we act accrdingly. By your own words, marrying you the liberated women would be oppression. Modern men respect women and their freedom, so we do not marry them.