Reddit reviews Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters

> Japan watchers have made a perennial sport out of opining on the causes of Japan’s low marriage and birth rates, even though they’re common to most advanced economies. ...

>... Though feminist ideals are widespread and women’s career opportunities are expanding, Japanese women who marry are still expected to end their careers and take on a traditional role in the household, making the prospect less attractive.

I really love how the article you quote seems to make the amazingly counterfactual link that, somehow, an increase in feminists ideals will solve Japan's demographic crisis.

To be fair this notion seems to be widespread. There seems to be a cottage industry devoted to churning out books that claim if only men would just man-up and stop thinking of enjoying their own lives... thinks would somehow work out. Because, as we all know, what all women really want is a cuckold in the kitchen and Pablo in the bedroom.

On the Left and Right, there seems to be no evidence that can convince some people that feminism is the problem. One of the rare exceptions I know of is Helen Smith's Men on Strike.

Betsy Stevenson tweeted this with an accompanying figure:

> Women's participation climbs while men's stagnates. Our greatest challenge: men on strike from life: Not marrying, raising kids, or working.

Made me think back to Helen Smith's book titled Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters, but with Stevenson being from what I'd consider largely the opposite side of the political spectrum (and with Stevenson having a much higher public profile - i.e. on Obama's Council of Economic Advisors / previous Chief Economist at the US Department of Labor).

First off, I don't think it's helpful to take the hard position of "there is a war on boys/men" unless you can thoroughly argue that position. A "War" implies aggressors and defenders which puts people you're trying to convince on the defensive. Even if you believe it's true, taking such a hard position without having your arguments air tight just defeats your purpose. Even if you do have your arguments on point, it's easy for people to use a strawman to say you think women are oppressing men. Even worse they will take you as saying women seeking equality oppresses men, or that you're saying men are powerless, then dismiss your claims based on that misunderstanding.

I would recommend making a softer assertion along the lines of "the well being of men has been declining in the Western world." That softer claim is much easier to defend, just look at suicide rates, incarceration rates, education stats, life expectancy rates etc. Take an approach that is closer to "we are all int his together so we should all want both men and women to do well and right now men need help." That triggers the leftist desire for collectivism and cooperation.

Tucker Carlson is running a Men in America segment every Wednesday this month about how men are in trouble these days. He provides a ton of stats and statistics on the topic. I'll edit this if I can find links to the segments.

March 7 Tucker: Something ominous is happening to men in America

March 14 Tucker: Washington not worried about male wage crisis

With any of these books, I highly recommend looking up video interviews with the authors to get more information and to see how they condense their arguments.

The war against boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men by Christina Hoff Sommers.



Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters Paperback –
by Helen Smith PhD

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 Paperback – January 29, 2013
by Charles Murray


The gender gap stuff has been going on since the 1970s. Economist Thomas Sowell, student of Milton Friedman, has been explaining how asinine the claim is for decades. Here he is dismantaling it back in the 1970s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_sGn6PdmIo

[Here is another take down from more recently.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EK6Y1X_xa4
) This interview covers his book Economic
Facts and Fallacies, the chapter Male-Female Facts and Fallacies would be a good resource for you to read and take notes on concerning the pay gap myth. Here are some good quotes from that chapter.

>“History shows that the career paths of women over the course of the twentieth century bore little resemblance to a scenario in which variations in employer discrimination explain variations in women’s career progress.”

> “The proportion of women in professions and other high-level positions was greater during the first decades of the twentieth century than in the middle, all before anti-discrimination laws or the rise of the feminist movement.” Further, “There is no pay gap for full-time workers 21-35 living alone,” and, “As far back as 1969, academic women who never married earned more than academic men who never married.”

>In another study, from 2005, “Among college-educated never married individuals with no children who worked full time and were from 40 to 64 years old, men averaged $40,000 a year and women $47,000.” What, then, explains cases when the numbers tilt the other way?

Here is a transcript of the above interview. Here is a good one...

>Interviewer: Well, you're right. I'm gonna quote you again. "Among the many factors which influence male-female economic differences, the most elusive is employer discrimination."

>Dr. Sowell: Yes, that when you correct for all the various factors such as the number of hours worked, the continuous employment versus taking a few years out to have children and so on, you take all that into account, the differences between men and women become quite trivial. If you look at the academic world or as far back in 1969, women who were
never married and earn higher incomes than men would never marry. They became
tenure professor at a higher rate than men who would never marry. And then later on if
you look at the general population, if you take the women who are past the childbearing
years and they work continuously, their incomes were higher than men who would work
continuously and so on. So the difference is that not that the employer is paying them
differently, but that they have different characteristics.

>Interviewer: So, the central variable and explaining economic differences between men and
women is not employer discrimination, not the rise of feminism, it's that women--it's
child rearing, marriage and child rearing, that's the variable.

>Sowell: Yes.

>Interviewer: As that varies, a woman's arrival or participation rate in higher level occupations
varies with that, that's—

>Sowell:Absolutely.

>Interviewer: Okay. Now in principle, you note, family responsibilities could be perfectly evenly divided between fathers and mothers. But that isn't the way it has worked in practice.
Quote, I'm quoting you again. "Since economic consequences follow from practices
rather than principles, the asymmetrical division of domestic responsibilities produces
male-female difference in income." Question, what are the policy implications of that?
If we become fixed on eliminating male-female income differences, is it the case that the
only choice, the only route for doing that is to involve the government in redesigning the
very nature of the family?










The Pay Gap Myth and Other Lies That Won’t Die
By THOMAS SOWELL

Thomas Sowell takes down the gender 'wage' gap


***

Milton Friedman - Case Against Equal Pay for Equal Work - Professor Friedman explains how support for "equal pay for equal work" helps promote sexism.

This is an interesting argument but to fully understand what he is referring to you need to understand that minimum wage laws have traditionally been used as a way to oppress weaker social groups.
If there is any work where being a man or being a woman makes an individual more qualified for a job or better suited to the job, then the only power the unsuited party has is to offer to work for less money. If you insist on equal pay though you remove that one economic incentive the less desired group has to convince someone to hire them, they cost less.

This is captured well in the generally true claim "No man hates another more than he loves himself." You can be the biggest racist or sexist in the world but it's very rare for that prejudice to be motivating enough that you would see your business where you derive your livelihood and the security of your children fail just to spite someone. There are so many examples of very racist people putting their prejudices aside in order to hire minorities simply because it's cheaper to do so. Establishing equal pay or minimum wage laws completely removes the economic incentive to put your own prejudices aside. They remove greed as a motivating factor for giving people opportunity.

Economist Walter E Williams has written a book on this called South Africa's War Against Capitalism based on his study of the country during apartheid. Milton is making a similar argument against equal pay as Williams did concerning minimum wage. Williams point was that if you have racism in a society where people are irrationality predisposed not to hire a certain group, then the only power that group has to get a job is to offer to work for less. That's why white, racist labor unions have always been the ones to push minimum wage laws when confronted by a minority population competing for jobs. You saw the same thing happen in the US when black men moved North and competed with white laborers for railroad jobs. The white unions pushed for our first minimum wage laws which removed the economic incentive from employers to hire minorities.

If you take the feminist argument seriously, that there is rampant sexism in certain industries, then it makes no sense to force those industries to pay women an equal amount. Rather than hiring them despite their sexism because they can pay them less, those employers will simply stop hiring women altogether because they hate women. To me this shows the irrationality of the claims that feminist make about sexism being the cause of a lack of representation in certain fields. It's not because of sexism but because of self-selection. In countries with higher levels of gender equality you see even higher rather of self-selection in jobs. There are far more women in tech in countries that rate low on women's rights. Russia for example.

Economist Walter E Williams - Minimum Wage as a Racist Tool 2:20

// , Men are no longer the keepers of commitment, either.

Rollo Tomassi has written about this, as well.

The situation has become far more intense than Helen Smith predicted: https://www.amazon.com/Men-Strike-Boycotting-Marriage-Fatherhood/dp/1594037620

Here's a link to Rollo's article on the subject, which surprised me a great deal:

https://therationalmale.com/2016/08/21/the-key-masters/

Excerpt:

>For obvious reasons, highly desirable women, women at the peak of their sexual market valuation, are always the least concerned with men’s capacity to commit. They largely have the luxury to be selective, but furthermore the time at which women are at their highest SMV is usually the point at which men are still building upon their own. Eventually, commitment only has an appreciable value to a woman when she is most in need of it; when her SMV is in decline.

>I should also point out that men, the majority being Blue Pill Betas, are the most necessitous of a woman’s commitment when she is at her highest, his is an unproven commodity, and he appreciates the value of a woman’s commitment. Thus, most men look for a stable monogamy in their early to mid 20s, while more mature men who’ve had time to build their SMV into their mid to late thirties tend to be less concerned with monogamy. This is why we hear the constant drone of women bemoaning that highly valuable, supposedly peer-equitable men’s unwillingness to commit and settle down with women aging out of the sexual marketplace. Women are far less concerned with the commitment-readiness of young, unproven men who themselves would commit to even a women in the mid-range of her SMV.

>At the end here, I think it’s time Red Pill men disabuse themselves of the idea that they are the ‘gatekeepers’ of commitment, and rather employ their internalized Red Pill awareness and Game to be the ‘key masters’ of women. While I have no doubt that commitment can be a carrot on the stick for some women, the problem really lies in how that commitment is in anyway valuable and balance that knowledge with the fact that commitment, once given, becomes valueless and taken for granted when it’s established. The fact that you’d commit to a woman isn’t something that carries a relationship, no matter how badly she wanted it from you before.

>There really is no quid pro quo when it comes to commitment or value in believing you’re a gatekeeper of it.
~

On it's face, the organization she is writing for is traditional and counter-feminism. She puts the blame on feminism and in a very RP manner notes that men are the relationship gatekeepers.


However, it comes across as a dig to mention "perpetual adolescence". The "normal progression into adult roles of responsibility and self-sufficiency, roles generally associated with marriage and fatherhood" is more of an objective observation.


However, she doesn't go into any analysis like in, say, Men On Strike. No-fault divorce is probably the biggest factor. Why would you invest time, money, and emotion into a life that can be taken away from you for any reason or no reason at all?


IMHO, all the other factors are either secondary or are effects rather than causes.

I lost respect for Feminists back when Bill Clinton was president . Two women brought sexual harassment cases against him. Even back then the feminist were saying we always have to believe the women in these cases. Until it was Bill Clinton and then Gloria Steinem and other feminist sided with the Clinton's

I am not a right wing conservative, But over the years I have seen feminist turn their back on a lot of women simply because they did not like their politics.

​

I agree with you that men's issues have been completely ignored and if you are a man and you speak up you are a misogynist. Some great books and a movie you might be interested in

​

The Boy Crisis

https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Crisis-Boys-Struggling-About/dp/1942952716

​

Men on Strike

American society has become anti-male. Men are sensing the backlash and are consciously and unconsciously going “on strike.” They are dropping out of college, leaving the workforce and avoiding marriage and fatherhood at alarming rates. The trend is so pronounced that a number of books have been written about this “man-child” phenomenon, concluding that men have taken a vacation from responsibility simply because they can. But why should men participate in a system that seems to be increasingly stacked against them?

https://www.amazon.com/Men-Strike-Boycotting-Marriage-Fatherhood/dp/1594037620/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1537219858&sr=1-1&keywords=men+on+strike

​

The movie " The Red Pill" I think it is on Amazon

My friend, you are correct but late:

Men ARE starting to stop agreeing to get married:

https://www.amazon.com/Men-Strike-Boycotting-Marriage-Fatherhood/dp/1594037620/

And it Western society is already rotting from within.

>In terms of the bad legal climate, fight back dammit. Fight for yourself, your kids and everyone else’s kids.

Won't have any success. MRAs have been pushing that load for decades and gotten nowhere with it.

But men are becoming aware of their power.

The power to say no.

see: https://www.amazon.com/Men-Strike-Boycotting-Marriage-Fatherhood/dp/1594037620

​

I would actually argue that it has more to do with men choosing not to marry...or date even. There's no economic or family incentive. A friend let me borrow this book a few weeks ago and it was eye-opening. It's one opinion, but an interesting read with some valid points.

Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters: http://www.amazon.com/Men-Strike-Boycotting-Marriage-Fatherhood/dp/1594037620/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419206286&sr=8-1&keywords=men+on+strike

Men on strike, Dr. Helen Smith. Her articles are regularly linked in this reddit, so just do a search for a fast preview.

And now Men [Are Going] On Strike, the ungrateful wretches.

Before I even found TRP/RPW I was deep into MRA discussion. I will keep on recommending Karen Straughan's videos, more specifically Feminism and the Disposable Male (probably the most powerful of her pieces). After that, sorting by popular, even if you are already familiar with Karen's content. There's honestly a lot of material on youtube that I would go to before a book because of how non establishment the criticism is.

While Karen's style is more of a take down of specific articles/videos/ideas, TyphonBlue (now Based Bager) approached the subject by analyzing Threat Narrative tropes (not sure if she coined it but I firstheard it from her), here's a playlist. I can't rewatch right now to make sure it's beginner's content, it is less approachable than Karen's but equally insightful.

The thing with a lot of YouTubers though is that it all expires so quickly. Either it's a take-down that was relevant then and it hardly makes any sense now (it peaked around 2011), or the user deleted the channel or became super extreme or changed the focus of the channel...

Why I'm No Longer a Feminist has some good points about how feminist circles are (I generally enjoy such videos, Lauren Southern has one.. I tried to find more in my liked videos and they are either deleted or private), here's a mirror of Christy0Misty's videos before she deleted.

For books, the most obvious would be Christina Hoff Sommers' (Who Stole Feminism?, The War Against Boys) which haven't read aside from articles and videos. A book I have read is Men on Strike by Helen Smith, it's sorta repetitive but books on definite topics are easier to find (she writes a column here). I think articles is where it's mostly at, but I would love to read recommended books.

A lot of antifeminist thought goes hand in hand with criticism of the left. It's so vast though I wouldn't know where to start. I generally look into individual people and their timelines. And A LOT of it has to be your own conclusions of feminist thought you read first-hand. So it's really important to know its main ideas and waves. A very popular criticism is about it being rehashed Marxism, for example. So looking into western philosophy as a primer is always advised. Here's a free introductory course to the History of Western Philosophy.

Give him the book "The Rational Male" and "Men on Strike" lol

 



Just tell him you don't want to be a third wheel and that you respect his girlfriend, but feel weird about being part of a trike..

There is nothing wrong with saying that you want to have some "Bro time", because you are kinda burned out from dealing with all the women stresses at work all the time. Makes you sound like an awesome dude, while kinda getting the point across. Plus he's your brother, he should understand, right?

Yep, I am the only one.

Oh no, wait, there someone else. She even wrote a book about it that shows the extend of the issue, using stats and surveys.

I find it pathetic that you people are incapable of engaging my arguments, all you can do is to point as me being the wrong one "you seem to be the only one here who thinks so".

If we as a society want more people to breed; then we should enact more favorable laws towards men around marriage and reproduction. The book Men On Strike does a pretty good job of explaining this.

Archives for the links in comments:

• By hga_another (amazon.com): http://archive.is/Jg1LB
  
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  I am Mnemosyne 2.1, 418 i'm a teapot ^^^^/r/botsrights ^^^^Contribute ^^^^message ^^^^me ^^^^suggestions ^^^^at ^^^^any ^^^^time ^^^^Opt ^^^^out ^^^^of ^^^^tracking ^^^^by ^^^^messaging ^^^^me ^^^^"Opt ^^^^Out" ^^^^at ^^^^any ^^^^time

>saying that I should man up and start acting like a man

I've always had the problem with someone saying "man up". It wasn't until I read Men on Strike by Helen Smith - Amazon that I finally learned that it means "do as I say and don't give me trouble". It's simply a shaming tactic, which all women, and many men, use on men.
 
The best response to anyone that says it is to tell them they have an opinion of what a man is but it's their opinion. You don't share their opinion so they should go away and leave you be.

>Your one example of a house husband doesn't outweigh all the guys >that are successfully and happily doing it.

I'm sure all 7 of them are living the dream.

> Now you're saying that women don't like to work?

I'm saying women have options and statistically go for "fun" jobs, whereas men have no options and statistically chase money to provide for their families.

>There are plenty of men who work in corporate America in air >conditioned offices.

Most of which are swamped with HR harpies and #metoo bullshit, men are being driven out of the professional jobs, as well as most of academia and being alienated from wider society.

All of this is backed up by hard data, there are entire books written about this subject, you should go do your research.

>it's possible to teach men to do manual labor too

IIRC men are ~%95 of the construction profession and have been since the dawn of humanity.

>I already have a career in construction.

Yesterday you worked in an office, you should probably get your story straight but at this point I already see that you're an ideologue living in her own private idaho.

> Women have to perform just like men do.

Provably false

> On that topic, what about all the guys who post about being "proud" >of living off their parents and playing video games all day?

https://www.amazon.com/Men-Strike-Boycotting-Marriage-Fatherhood/dp/1594037620/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=men+on+strike&qid=1562070754&s=gateway&sr=8-1

>My question was what I would possibly miss if I turned male, and after >several replies, you still have no answer.

You have your answers, you simply lack the ability to think outside of your own vagina.

oh and read this book if you have the chance.

https://www.amazon.ca/Men-Strike-Boycotting-Marriage-Fatherhood/dp/1594037620

As for Women who support or at least understand MGTOW I'd assume the two would be

Esther Vilar of The Manipulated man : https://www.amazon.com/Manipulated-Man-Esther-Vilar/dp/1905177178


and Dr. Helen Smith Of Men on Strike : https://www.amazon.com/Men-Strike-Boycotting-Marriage-Fatherhood/dp/1594037620


It's going to be harder to find sources that rationally argue against MGTOW because the typical arguments against MGTOW tend to attack mens sexuality , sexual abilities( incel / virgin ) , or tend to call men who do not subscribe to traditional male gender roles cowards and similar emasculating claims to evoke an emotional response .

The most common arguments against MGTOW are probably going to be listed as arguments in support of men marrying .

This book i stumbled across described exactly your mindset and mine as well. I'm 30 and i've felt that way about being mentally checked out in a sense...since about...15 or so....checkout the book link here.

https://www.amazon.com/Men-Strike-Boycotting-Marriage-Fatherhood/dp/1594037620/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=men+on+strike&qid=1563427724&s=gateway&sprefix=men+on+stir&sr=8-1