I was having a conversation with my friend about whether she was going to encourage her daughters to get married or not (we are both from cultures that heavily promote marriage and treat you like something is wrong with you if you don’t get married). She told me “well i told her she doesn’t have to get married if she doesn’t want to”. She believes she is freeing her daughter and providing her a path to true independence and this comes from the idea that partnership is not for everyone so why force it?

What I think most people don’t know is that children really don’t know what they want and they spend a significant part of their development trying to figure out what’s important and what they should want (ie. what is “normal”). They get these cues both from their parents and societal messaging at large and then it’s this that primarily shapes what they want. They really have no insight in what paths lead to a fulfilling and happy life for them.

In the past there was always this shared culture promoting family (family sitcoms) and in the era that I grew up in, Disney was huge. I grew up during the princess being saved by princes phase of Disney and it’s not surprising to me that as a teen, girls were absolutely boy obsessed. This spawned further material around having a boyfriend: board games, magazines. These were huge growing up and I remember the majority of girls I knew always wanted to talk about boys and having boyfriends (that is except me- I found most girls insipid and the topic of boys boring so i really didn’t get along with most girls. Of course i didn’t know at that time that i was ND, so that’s probably a big reason why I ended going against the grain).

After this era, it was criticized that women were not ambitious enough and that perhaps they needed to see more “strong female leads” in Disney movies. So we started to see more strong independent princesses (which is fine), however there was further criticism because these characters (ex.Mulan) still had romantic interests and they wanted movies which removed those romantic interests altogether, these were subsequently made (ex. Moana).

Now we are in an era where there really is no “shared” culture anymore, but a multitude of micro cultures and in order for anything to pierce through all the silos it needs to be rather provocative.

I believe the lack of a shared culture promoting romance and family along with the rise of misandry on social media has completely fractured the male/female dynamic and this is a big reason why we are headed towards a population collapse. I know there are other factors (economics, expectations around QOL, etc). But should we as a society actively encourage and promote partnership? (I know this is a controversial position for liberals).

Gender wars are not a new thing, and hating feminists (I think it was 2nd feminists that were derided for being hairy man-haters?) is not a new thing. But it FEELS different this time and somewhat more catastrophic. Can anyone comment on this?

I know this is not truly in line with male advocacy, but I’m not sure where to find normal people to ask this question and part of what I want to do to help men/boys requires answering these questions. I see men’s issues as the result of a system design problem so In order for me to write about this I need to assess the overall system accurately.