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CS's avatar

The bigger issue is that young men really are superfluous. There’s little need for us in a service economy. If we were immediately needed for anything it wouldn’t be this way.

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Scott Greer's avatar

Largely agree. That's a topic for another column

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Simon Laird's avatar

Not really. The service economy itself is superfluous. Young men are doing all the real work.

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CS's avatar

Real work? Yes. Compensation? No. Very few people do any work in the US and the income is spread out through sinecures like women in STEM and government work. It's a disgusting system where we subsidize the lifestyle of professional women and other mediocrities. The increase in income among these women, as Scott mentioned in the article, is the primary driving force behind simp culture.

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John's avatar

I don't think all of this work women are doing in tech/admin roles is worthless. The applications created by tech companies have been transformative. For instance, it is incredibly seamless to set up a ride to the airport with an app like Uber. The user interface is very efficient. It's not just men designing the features that go into it. The work that government agencies do is often critical (not saying they're not overstaffed in some cases). Men have to find ways to adapt to the economy and be competitive regardless of the roles or compensation that women receive. It isn't true that men cannot find ways to participate in a service economy. This is a defeatist mindset. It is true that policies like title 9 and affirmative action have disadvantaged men, but I think we would still see recent economic changes steadily favoring women in an equal opportunity job market.

In regard to simp culture, there are many factors driving that trend. Women making more money relative to men is just one of them.

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Simon Laird's avatar

True

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Stiklestad's avatar

"The answer to the cringiness of the simp society is to restore male authority to its proper place. " Too true, but how? Male authority was etched deeply into Western culture by the biblical ethos, which revealed the covenant form of marriage. Sure, men were/are stronger and still do more, more assiduously, than women in almost every endeavor. But this counts for little these days. Not even incontrovertible evidences about the slow death of marriage seem to register with people. It is all quite odd. (Clearly marriage has nearly been destroyed by no-fault divorce, which is always "his fault" divorce, since women's feelings have now been elevated to irrefragable status by the courts.) So, women are in full-on rebellion against masculinity and male leadership. This is even true of those who exalt motherhood. One can be a mother then move on to other things. Do you still need the husband if you do? If he is not sufficiently supportive or useful for status, then maybe not. This could even be proposed as a "Christian" life trajectory for a woman. The only place where male authority seems operative is in the Catholic clerical establishment. Sadly, these hierarchs don't, in turn, support the place of men as Heads of their households. Too hot to handle, I suppose. Yes, the situation is quite disordered in our society from top to bottom. Would love to hear others' ideas.

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Santa Lucia's avatar

Many of the conservative young women I know say they want a husband to lead them. I am not convinced that they mean this, or mean it only in a superficial way. People do deplore the death of marriage, but they blame for not being sufficient providers, not women for having too high standards. Scott talks about this elsewhere

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Stiklestad's avatar

It occurred to me to mention that dads are driving the girl boss phenomena in a strange permutation of their roles as provider and protector. The same goes for driving women into athletics. Raise strong girls and you look strong. Surely that is a very deep feminist indoctrination.

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Santa Lucia's avatar

I think fathers push young women into athletics because it seems healthier than most other activities. Mens sana in corpore sano right? Dance is often overly sexual, and other more feminine hobbies aren’t considered normal, plus they don’t have a physical health component.

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Simon Laird's avatar

The NRO link says the opposite of what Scott says it does. It blames both Phillips and the men.

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Werner Heisenberg's avatar

We need Andrew Tate

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