The Gender War to End All Gender Wars
The horrific conclusion of the greatest generational gamble of our lifetime.
This topic isn’t specifically related to my exploration on this channel of finding Serenity, but I feel it’s as good a place as any.
For the past year or so I haven’t been able to help but observe a distinct trend in certain section of social media in which men and women have been feuding over sex/romance/dating/marriage.
What it breaks down to are men’s Youtube channels and Twitter discussions centered around either generating female outrage or getting them to say absurd things on video that draws the audience. Or, it’s akin to a “red pill” version of
in which men (they’re anon, so who knows?) repost videos or photos published by women (usually dating profiles) saying things about their nature that would have been adamantly denied by those same gals ten years ago.Naturally, this then provokes outrage from other women and men, the latter of which don’t seem to understand the full dynamic at play.
On the opposite side, there’s women railing against men’s completely normal dating preferences and/or reacting to anon accounts making intentionally provocative comments as if they’re speaking on behalf of all men. Or they’re complaining about men in general and finger-waving with a digital digit toward men in an abstract sense.
Now people can say the internet isn’t real and this isn’t a reflection of society, but problem with that is the stats and data don’t lie, and what they reveal does not contradict the general vibe I sense online conveyed through this subcultural conflict.
We’re witnessing the inevitable conclusion of a 30+ year social experiment in which men and women have been deliberately raised to not need each other and to not offer what the other wants or needs, yet resent each other because they do in fact need one another.
To get to the end at the beginning, we’re witnessing the ramping up of an ongoing gender war that, like World War 1, will likely cause catastrophic damage to the social relations without any gain as a generation of men and women slowly enter their 40s facing perpetual singleness and childlessness - and blame each other for that fate.
A few things I want to clarify right away.
One, don’t confuse this with an individual problem. If your reaction already is “I’m not experiencing this or don’t see it myself, so nobody else should” then you don’t understand the difference between the macro v. micro. People in Kansas don’t have to worry about tsunamis and hurricanes but they know better than to ponder why Floridians do, even though both peoples are in America.
Secondly, “gender war” is a metaphor to describe a social climate where men and women fundamentally see each other as adversaries and exist in a state of hostility. It’s the difference between how enemies view each other in a bitter war and how friends view each other in a game of basketball. There’s competition in both, but the outcome in one is a zero-sum game fraught with huge risks for the loser, whereas with the pickup game of basketball the idea is everyone enjoys themselves regardless of who the “winning” side is and only the insecure get angry if they lose.
Thirdly, this isn’t a crusade-like call for individuals to solve a societal problem. It’s akin to warning the housing market is going to collapse due to subprime mortgages.
Lastly, this war doesn’t span the entire population. This is a intragenerational conflict, and the conflict is more real the younger you get. I recently attended a small local concert put on by a Baby Boomer who used to be with a world-famous rock band, and it was clear by the way he talked he came from an era where men and women actually liked each other.
The effect of a gender war is that the men and women don’t date, marry, or have children together, and that’s precisely what we’re witnessing.
Again, people can deny, deflect, and gaslight all they want, but the numbers are there.
There are of course a lot of factors involved, but a big component of this social experiment has been delaying marriage for as long as possible as if it’s something you do out of resignation. When I was in college in the 2000s it was clear there was a general attitude that marriage was for when you were in your 30s, and not before.
Obviously not everyone followed the script precisely, but this mindset has affected everything that has occurred since.
Back when he was still blogging, Dalrock wrote extensively about marriage trends amongst millennials (my generation). The data made it obvious that marriages were being delayed indefinitely (it’s also a female-driven trend).
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It’s important to note that the median age of marriage only reflects marriages that have actually occurred. What if the majority of a generation has yet to be married? In other words, when a generation has finally passed the regular age for a first marriage, what will the final median age be?
That is entirely dependent on when there is a cultural shift and millennial men and women collectively begin settling down.
However, that doesn’t appear to be happening. Less than half of millennials are married at an age when 81 percent of the Silent Generation married. It’s forecasted that by 2030 45 percent of women between 25-44 will be single, childless, and never married.
If you’re looking at all this and wondering or asking “who cares?” please stop reading. You’re too short for this ride.
Contrary to what you hear or what people say, perpetual singleness and childlessness wasn’t what millennial men and women ultimately planned, and it’s obviously not normal or sustainable.
The fallout was between then and now. Put simply, millennial men and women have not only grown up without regards for what the other finds attractive in the opposite sex, but amid a profound culture war that really ramped up in the 2010s. Dating habits reflected the general attitude of delaying marriage, and thus you avoid those who were relationship material.
Pretty much everything has been flipped upside down in terms of how to behave, social norms, what is and isn’t appropriate, and basic decorum and etiquette. Those running our societal institutions allowed malicious midwits and those of the lowest common denominator to dictate the rules for how we all conduct ourselves, and this is the result.
While women were being pushed into careers and being a strong, independent woman who don’t need no man except for hooking up with, young men their age were getting bombarded with the most vile rhetoric imaginable from activists, the government, and the mainstream media. For women outraged at the misogynistic rhetoric spewed by anonymous “red pill” accounts, all I can say is you must have been asleep 10 years ago during the faux college campus rape hysteria in which young men’s civil rights were violated and their lives were destroyed in kangaroo courts or subject to some of the most disgusting examples of journalistic malpractice this reporter has ever witnessed.
Now the Zoomers are joining in the fray.
Rian Stone made a great analogy about this situation and how it has destroyed the male protective instinct and capacity for sympathy toward women in general.
Feminism is not an ideology, it’s a tactic. The tactic is to scale up the male protective instinct for maximum female gain. That’s why it can be contradictory and spin on a dime. The problem is, like oil, there isn’t unlimited supply.
I’m writing this to show you what burning the oil fields in Iraq looks like from the perspective of the oil fields. Men are increasingly becoming hardened to female pain. If you don’t believe me, go online and see what the biggest trends are right now. I’ll give you a hint: it’s watching women suffer, usually through their own callus actions.
I’d also throw that out there to all the men, typically older, who express angry bewilderment at the vitriol coming from young men online. In what way have you stood up for young men against the same kind of talk since 2010?
It reminds me of what King Theoden says in Lord of the Rings: The Towers:
"Gondor? Where was Gondor when the Westfold fell? Where was Gondor when our enemies closed in around us!?
Where was Gondor?
After all this, we’re now at the point where millennials are in their mid-30s to early 40s, and it’s quickly approaching a now-or-never scenario for marriage and a family. Fertility issues aside, nobody wants to have teenagers in their 60s.
But everything that’s happened up to this point has left them utterly unprepared and unequipped. You can’t take a generation raised in a combination of hookup culture and toxic feminism that puts them at war with one another, in competition with one another, and then expect them to suddenly let bygones be bygones.
Dalrock himself anticipated this in a post:
This still leaves the question of how many of today’s unattached 30 something men will be lured by the possibility of marrying an ageing career woman/former carouseler to knock themselves out career wise. The other question is what percentage of those men who are already successful will want to roll the dice on marriage in our current legal and social climate. This is a question which will greatly impact everything from future tax revenues to property values. If beta men don’t perceive the incentive to take on the role of family provider it is because we as a society have spent great efforts to degrade that role.
The one problem with Dalrock’s observation is that he assumed men would finally be in a position of power within the marriage market to where they could dictate terms and that women would be the one to flinch in this game of chicken.
Women aren’t flinching, and I don’t think they ever will.
Consider this New York Post article written by a 37-year-old woman on millennial men’s preferences for a traditional marriage.
In 2022, for families to thrive, husbands may need to start supporting their wives’ careers the way wives have supported their husbands’ for generations. Women aren’t going to go backwards. If men want relationships to last, they’ll have to go forward into the 21st century.
She’s referring to marriages that have already occurred, but notice the frame. She cites data showing women overall initiate 69 percent of divorces, and among college-educated women it’s 90 percent.
She’s effectively saying that if men want (x), they need to do (y) that women are telling them to do, or else (z) will happen. It’s an ultimatum, not a negotiation.
The same attitude applies to the dating market: women are controlling and driving the trends.
We’re witnessing an incredibly weird psychological phenomenon in which a conversation is being directed at men who don’t really exist. You see this at play best with the “tradcon” men who try to browbeat men into marrying. They talk as if single millennial men are single despite having the means to provide for a family and having women pining to marry them, but are rejecting them out of immaturity (which raises the question of why you’d want such a man to marry).
In other words, they’re carrying on under the delusion that the delay in marriages is a male-driven trend and that the men are in the driver’s seat.
The sad reality is that there are many single men unfit for marriage for one reason or another, whether it’s financial issues or dysfunctional behavior, and they are not having women barking up their tree when it comes to settling down. These “tisk tisking” conversations are focused on a very, very small group of men who don’t reflect the general trend.
While bitter single incel men lash out at women online or deride the less articulate among them, on the opposite side you have childless older women emerging from the radiation-like world of hookup culture and infantizing younger women out of a deep, instinctive fear that men their age will date/marry those in the younger generation, an option these women would not consider due to their own preferences.
This is why millennial women delaying marriage indefinitely was such a massive, understated risk. It is perhaps one of the greatest generational gambles in recorded history, rooted in the ardent belief that marriage would be theirs for the taking when they were good and ready to settle down.
I wrote a dystopian short story years ago about a society in which men dating younger women outside of the “half your age plus seven” rule was heavily stigmatized and could get you fired, and while we might not see something like that actually happen, it’s obvious that the online rhetoric regarding men dating younger women will ramp up intensely as single women in their 30s get older.
However, I don’t see this trend increasing in any significant way for a variety of reasons.
What I do see happening is the rhetoric between these groups growing increasingly more intensely toxic and inflammatory, because there is no mechanism in place to deescalate the conflict.
Recall the 2000 film The Patriot in which General Cornwallis implores Mel Gibson’s character not to target officers. “Imagine the utter chaos of leaderless armies having at each other,” he warns. “There must be gentlemen in command to lead and when necessary restrain their men.”
This won’t shock most of you, but there are no officers in the field on either side. There is no authoritative figure or institution restraining them. You don’t see “trad” women shaming girls bragging about making a small fortune off of Only Fans; the chastising is reserved for the simps who pay her for the faux compliments and greetings.
When girls in ultra tight yoga pants post videos accusing men of being creepy in the gym for merely asking them if they’re done using a bar or equipment, women don’t collectively pile on her for trying to get attention or tell her to stop dressing that way while complaining about men noticing her.
Meanwhile, embittered men will see those videos and keep it in mind when some girl with a similar lack of class is ruthlessly mocked on some male outrage porn YouTube channel.
The problem is that, like with trench warfare of World War 1, both sides are inflicting damage, but not making any ground. The conversations are adversarial in nature and meant to inflict harm, not reach a mutually beneficial outcome.
I don’t see a truce. The irony is that the British, French, and German soldiers in World War 1 managed to make one in 1914 for Christmas; the reason why is they really didn’t see each other as the enemy as much as their leadership that sent them to their deaths needlessly, while living comfortably far away from the front lines.
The tragedy is that the solution to what’s going on is to get up out of the trenches and go home, i.e. stay out of these online conflicts. This isn’t a call to lay down your arms, but simply stop participating.
But too many people will stay and get chewed up by the meat grinder because they’re too focused on justifying and rationalizing why it’s the other side’s fault or, they’ve looked long enough into the abyss for it to now look back at them.
Where this goes and how bad it gets, is anybody’s guess.
My speculation is that - barring some major upheaval - it will result in a massive demographic of perpetually childless, unmarried people and a generational gap, with profound social and cultural consequences for decades. It may very well be so horrific and terrible in its consequences that it will permanently alter how dating and marriage occurs for future generations who look at it as a worst-case scenario and cautionary tale.
Or, like with World War 1 we will just experience a 20-year armistice before something even worse occurs.