I’ve written a fair amount about the similarity between Traditional Conservatives and Feminists. However, one defining characteristic of the Trad Con is their stone cold humorlessness when it comes to delivering the “weak men are screwing feminism up” message. To Trad Cons there is absolutely no irony in this message, just a sense of disgust and outrage that weak men are standing in the way of achieving glorious feminist progress. This humorlessness is a byproduct of their great skill at denying reality. On the other end of the spectrum we have the Daily Mail, which makes a sport out of trolling its readers on the topic.
Most recently the Daily Mail asked: Are reluctant men to blame for so many women being childless? Throughout the article the Mail author juxtaposes claims that men are to blame with statements by childless women explaining that they were too picky, too feminist, or dumped/drove away their best prospects. After explaining the increase in almost entirely unwanted childlessness in women, the Mail article gets down to the hilarious business of trolling their readers (emphasis mine):
Melanie Whitehouse is certainly one of these women. And she is clear about the cause of her childlessness: men.
Or rather, the lack of men who were willing to settle down and start a family with her. The heartbreaking realisation that she was never going to have a baby struck late – in her 50s, while at a reunion lunch with her first boyfriend, whom she had dumped on a whim.
‘I hadn’t grieved for the children who might have been until then. I realised with painful clarity what I’d lost,’ she says. ‘Tom had been happily married for 25 years and had three kids, while I had nobody.’
After dumping the boring loyal dude, Melanie spent her most fertile years having sex with cads. Just before she turned 30, she started an affair with a married man named Duncan. This affair would become the defining milestone of her sexual career:
‘I always thinks of my life as BD and AD – Before Duncan and After Duncan. He changed everything.
After ten more years of the alpha carousel, Melanie decided that at 39 it was finally time to switch to beta bucks:
As her desperation increased, and the chances of her having a child began to tumble, Melanie took drastic action.
‘Aged 39, I went out with a tall, bald accountant. He was younger than me and obviously uncommitted, but I was determined to somehow make it work.
But she failed to stick the landing in the AF/BB strategy, by driving her beta bucks man away before she could pull off an “oops” pregnancy:
‘I’d shelved my dream of the perfect marriage by now and I took risks with contraception. I was quite prepared to bring a baby up alone if I had to. I remember getting so angry at his lack of regard for me that I had a huge row with him – and he dumped me.’
Other women blame men for not making their own unrealistic feminist expectations come true. Genevieve hilariously complains:
It was as if the men’s thinking hadn’t caught up with what women were told to expect from life. And I wasn’t prepared to accept this.
The comments to the article are quite interesting, as most of the recent comments could well have come from the manosphere. Yet one of the commenters is a 34 year old woman who explains that Not All Childless Women Are Like That. She is disturbed by the callous unfairness of a system which would make her marry and have children with a man she has contempt for before pulling the divorce/child support ripcord:
I’m 34, single and childless and its unfair to put myself and others in a similar situation in the same light based on the stories and views of just 3 women. Society has changed but simple bad luck has to be taken into account. The chances of meeting the right guy, at the right age and being financially secure to have a family are slim. Who wants to settle for someone who isnt quite right, have a child then split up a few years later? I’d rather be alone than in a miserable marriage that inevitably ends leaving two divorced parents and a child from a broken marriage.
*H/T Anon
