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The plankton generation

Dalrock
August 5, 2011

Oz Conservative has an excellent post up titled Struggling in a wilderness:

Who is the Plankton? She is a woman pushing 50 who decided to divorce her husband a few years ago. She has written a blog detailing her unhappiness in being unable to find another man.

The Daily Mail has an article about her, but her blog itself is even more interesting.

He expertly takes on the blog itself in the remainder of his post.  Go ahead and read his post now;  I’m happy to wait for your return.  Since he focused on the blog, I thought I’d share a bit on the Daily Mail article he referenced. The title of the piece is The Plankton Generation – that’s women who are barely visible and at the bottom of the food chain for romance – just because they’re over 45.  It opens with:

The woman, who is divorced but says she would love to be married again, describes herself as being ‘on the wrong side of 45 with a brace of kids’ and bewails her place in ‘relationship no-man’s land’, condemned to be alone for the rest of her days.

Obviously this is familiar territory.  Just a few weeks ago I wrote about how the very same Daily Mail was encouraging married middle aged women to dump their Boring loyal dudes.  Less than a week ago I showed how the very same Daily Mail had devoted no less than two articles whispering in women’s ears that they might need to divorce if they were Trapped in a not unhappy marriage.  I’ve lost track of how many times we’ve discussed the Daily Mail selling divorce.  They certainly provide the manosphere with rich fodder. But as we’ve seen before with the Mail, sometimes reality momentarily bleeds through.  Today the Mail isn’t selling divorce, and instead turning its gaze on the realities the women who they egged on are experiencing.

Next we learn about Ruthie, an attractive aging baby momma.  According to the article she is 47 and has been looking for a long term relationship for 10 years.  The author explains the thought process which lead to Ruthie’s current predicament:

‘I always had boyfriends when I was younger and assumed I would again after James was born,’ she says. ‘When he  was three, I started chatting online. These chats were fun — and sometimes quite flirty — but if I ever suggested  we meet, the men would often back  off, saying they were not looking for a relationship.

I’ve been called cruel in the past for bursting the bubble that women’s sexual power never declines, but I think the real cruelty is the misinformation we feed younger women which inhibits their ability to make better choices.  It isn’t that all women should marry young or necessarily even marry at all, but those who want to marry are best served to take the search for a husband seriously early on.  Those who choose to delay marriage or remain unmarried entirely would be much better served to understand the truth upfront;  they won’t be in the SMP power position forever, and dating won’t always be a fun round of judging the performance.

The reversal in the SMP power position causes women’s experiences of dating later in life to mirror men’s dating experience earlier in life.  Just as we often hear from men that younger women are flaky and will treat them as a backup plan or cancel at the last minute, older women experience the same things from the men they date.  We saw this above with Ruthie, and we see the same occuring with 46 year old Sarah Browne who works in communications for a skincare company:

‘I keep trying to date men over the internet, but it is often hopeless,’ she says. ‘I can’t count the times a guy has seemed really keen to arrange a date, and then, with sometimes only five minutes to go, I get a text saying sorry, he  can’t make it. I’ve been told they cry off as they have met someone more suitable.’

The author miss-attributes this to the cruelty of internet dating culture, but it is much better explained by the dynamics of the sexual marketplace (SMP).

This isn’t the only thing the author misreads.  The author infers that since there are roughly equal numbers of men and women aged 45 to 64, that there shouldn’t be an imbalance in dating fortunes for men and women of that age bracket.  Additionally, the piece suggests that the reason for the imbalance past age 64 is due to soley higher mortality rates for men.

I don’t have the data for the UK, but I’m guessing it roughly parallels the US Census data I pulled for my post on the shifting sexual marketplace.  It isn’t just a case of women moving from a position of relative strength to weakness in the SMP, the numbers go from being wildly stacked in their favor to ultimately being stacked against them.  Even when the numbers are roughly even in their late 30s and throughout their 40s, this is a huge change from when they were in their 20s:

img-1685878963-647c78b3ed97d8.19556361.jpgThis is of course magnified by the direction each sex tends to date age wise.  Women in their 20s are not only outnumbered by single men their age, but they have the option to date men older than them as well.  This same trend works to their disadvantage later in life.

Another bit of misinformation is this blurb from the margins:

Divorce in England and Wales in the 45- plus age group rose by more than 30 percent between 1997 and 2007

I’ve already addressed this here, but if you want to just see the chart it is here.  The next blurb in the margins also caught my attention:

Many studies suggest men who become single after years of marriage are quick to find a new mate, while women are more cautious

This is the old women are done with men after a certain age rationalization.  The reality is the quality of their choices tends to be much lower after a certain age.  We also know from the AARP study that women who divorce late in life are often shockingly alone, especially if they don’t remarry (emphasis in quotes is mine):

Almost 9 in 10 men (87%) dated after their divorce, compared to 8 in 10 women (79%)…  Among those who dated after the divorce, more than half of men (54%) but fewer women remarried (39%). (Page 39)

Many women, especially those who have not remarried (69%), do not touch or hug at all sexually. An even larger majority of women who have not remarried do not engage in sexual intercourse (77% saying not at all), in comparison with about half of men (49%) who have not remarried.  (Page 6)

Note that while the study was of late life divorce and done by the AARP, 89% of the people surveyed divorced between age 40 and 55.  The author of the Plankton blog herself addresses this question:

Show me a (straight) woman of my age who is alone and who says she doesn’t want a man.

Show me a liar.

One thing which made me chuckle about the article was the appeal to authority when establishing that the SMP really does shift from women to men as time progresses.  She turns to no less than a researcher from Oxford.  But he points her to the same OK Cupid blog post which I shared months ago:

It’s good to know the folks at Oxford are starting to catch up with the manosphere!

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Post Information
Title The plankton generation
Author Dalrock
Date August 5, 2011 3:35 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Blog Dalrock
Archive Link https://theredarchive.com/blog/Dalrock/the-plankton-generation.12242
https://theredarchive.com/blog/12242
Original Link https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/the-plankton-generation/
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