WHETHER we want to admit it or not, marriage and relationships still are very important issues for society. In the next decade, most University students will decide through trial and error with whom they want to spend the rest of their lives. Forty percent of those students will be wrong.
The more troubling trend is not the divorce rate, however, but the quality of men that women are forced to pick from these days. That is the dilemma Kay S. Hymowitz explored in her February 11 Wall Street Journal article, "Where Have the Good Men Gone." I do not know the answer to the question posed by Hymowitz, but the problem appears to be even more severe on college campuses.
University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus may have supplied an answer in his February 25 article for Slate Magazine, "Sex is Cheap." In the article, Regnerus suggests that the sexual economy has tilted in favor of men as the supply of "erotic capital" in society has expanded. Regnerus cites the availability of pornography, the prevalence of birth control and the loosening of social mores as key reasons for the dramatic decline in women's sexual supplier power. While the depreciation of women's erotic capital may appear to be simply a side effect of female empowerment, the imbalance in the sexual marketplace has serious long-term implications for society, the family and the potential happiness of the sexes.
Both Hymowitz and Regnerus highlight the increasingly accepted idea that women are outperforming men in the knowledge economy. While male salaries are still on average 80 percent more than women's, a new study has shown that single, childless women make roughly 8 percent more than their male peers. Regnerus notes "there's a growing imbalance between the number of successful young women and successful young men." Trends in University admission seem to support those findings as well, with women comprising 56 percent of the student population on Grounds.
What is troublesome about those developments is not that young women are out-competing male peers in the workforce, but that many men are content to allow women to run the show. Market forces are undermining women's sexual power from all angles. The growing availability of sexual outlets undermines the value of women's "erotic capital," while the dwindling supply of desirable mates raises the price women must pay to maintain a relationship.
Regnerus even suggests that the availability of sex is a potential reason why men in the modern generation appear to be floundering. Regnerus points to Sigmund Freud, noting men's "sexual success may, ironically, be hindering [men's] drive to achieve in life." The argument makes evolutionary sense. Women no longer require men to demonstrate commitment or an ability to provide before engaging in the procreative act. Men, therefore, have less of an incentive to achieve professionally if they can act on their biological reason for existence by simply making enough money to buy a couple of drinks at the local bar.
Few individuals have profited more from this disturbance in the sexual economy than Tucker Max, author of "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" and "Assholes Finish First." These books chronicle Max's numerous, and often remarkably callous, sexual encounters. Even someone who worships casual sex as devotedly as Max admits sex is a powerful motivating force for men in society. Max writes, "Men don't do anything - create art, build businesses, donate to charity, invent things, or do anything noteworthy - for any reason other than to impress women, and thus get them to have sex with us. If women didn't exist, we'd still just be naked grunting apes living in caves." Well if Max's sophisticated reasoning is correct, men no longer need to "build businesses, donate to charity or invent things" because women no longer demand that men put out before they do.
Hymowitz summarizes the present state of male-female relationships by saying "with women moving ahead in our advanced economy, husbands and fathers are now optional, and the qualities of character men once needed to play their roles - fortitude, stoicism, courage, fidelity - are obsolete." The need for men to fill their traditional roles within society appears to be on the decline in the kinder, gentler economy of the future. That is a good thing, because it seems that fewer men are emotionally, physically and intellectually capable of fulfilling the function within the family that our fathers have.
So where have all the good men gone? I think they are in a feminism-induced hibernation. Men need to step up and reclaim their chivalric place within society. Until that happens, women have unmade their beds, and now we have to lie in them.
Ginny Robinson's column normally appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at g.robinson@cavalierdaily.com.
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