Were
I to offer thoughts on marriage to young American men today, in these
the declining years of a once-great civilization, my advice would be
as follows: Don't do it. Or, if you do, do it in another country. In
America marriage is a grievous error.
And why so? Because of The
Chip. The Attitude. The bandsaw whine of anger, anger, anger that
makes American women an international horror. It's there. It's real.
You, a young man, may not
recognize the Chip if you have never seen normal, warm, happy women.
If you are twenty-something and haven't been out of the US, you
haven't seen them. They exist by the billion--in Latin America,
Singapore, Taiwan, Malaya, China and, last I looked, France and
Holland. And of course not every woman in America carries the Chip.
None of them think they do. Yet it is the default, the usual, what
comes out of the box.
The following is a perfectly
ordinary, everyday, bulk-lot example, suitable for poisoning a
cistern:
"Other than a 29-inch
waist and a full head of hair, there isn't much to recommend the
twentysomething male . . . . He is living an extended adolescence --
an adult-olescence -- and every immature, irresponsible, self-absorbed
thing he does is reinforced by the latest issue of his favorite men's
magazine." (Susan Reimer, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun. I
bet she goes out a lot.)*
Hers is the Attitude--and what
they think of you. It is the defining trait of American women.
Exceptions exist, and they have my apologies, but they are few and no,
sport, your Sally probably isn't one of them. They're coiled to bite.
As soon as problems arise in the marriage, they turn into Susan.
Susan Reimer is what is out
there, guys: bitter that no one wants her (as who in his right mind
could?), sure that no one is good enough for her, never having grasped
that those who would be loved must first be lovable. Understand this:
Susan is America. Some hide it better, springing it on you after the
ceremony, but Susan is the rule.
The Susans do not like men.
Sometimes they actually take courses in disliking men ("Women's
Studies"). Yet they want to marry one and have babies. For them,
the contradiction actually makes a kind of sense, because (and they
know this, believe me) they will get the house, the children, and the
child support. For you, it makes no sense. You will get raped in the
divorce courts. You don't know how bad it is. Don't do it.
A prime effect of marriage is
backbreaking financial overhead: the excessive house in the
prestigious suburb, the pricey but boring cars, all that. But if you
don't fall into the trap, keeping your expenses down means you can
live in Alaska or overseas and enjoy existence. There is more to life
than debt service. Although these are bad times for marrying, they are
extraordinarily good times for being single.
Now, children. This is sticky.
You may want them, or think you want them, or think you may want them.
She wants them. My advice is to move to almost any country where
English isn't spoken and women don't want their husbands to be the
mothers of their children. Any country inhabited by the Chinese would
do nicely.
Incidentally, remember that it
is never now or never. Your prospects improve with time. At
thirty-five or fifty you will be perfectly able to find a good woman
if you know where to look. See above list.
Remember also that these are
not good times for having children in America. It is almost
irresponsible. The schools are scholastically poor, drug-ridden, given
chiefly to political indoctrination, and hostile to male children. The
universities are little better. Divorce is hell on children and their
fathers, and nearly universal. The country lunges to police-statedom
and isn't, I suspect, as stable as it might be. Worse, worst, there is
Susan Reimer. Her name is legion, and she seeps everywhere, like the
effluvium of unwashed socks.
Further, there is no social
duty to have children. Some argue that the white population is in
decline. Tough. If the country chooses to make having kids
undesirable, then let it decline. It is not your problem.
Now, you might well wonder,
why are American women carrying the Chip? Practically, it doesn't
matter: They do carry it, and will continue. Still, it is partly
because from birth they are fed the notion that they have been
oppressed, battered, cheated, deprived, harassed, used as sex objects,
not used as sex objects, on and on. Being rational, you are perhaps
inclined to point out that never has a female population been less any
of these things, but don't bother. It will have no effect. The Chip is
an emotional artifact to which they respond emotionally.
The bedrock of The Attitude is
that everything is the man's fault. Wonders Reimer, "What is the
answer, especially if the 20- and 30-year-old male is such poor
marriage material?" She does not wonder, "If I am such a
grindingly awful termagant that men on three continents are crossing
their legs and feeling queasy over my mere column, and won't come near
me except in a Kevlar bathysphere with a disinfectant system, maybe
I'm doing something wrong. Gosh. I wonder what?"
Yet something more is going
on, though one does not easily see just what. Note that in recent
decades we have seen the invention by women of bulimia and anorexia,
which no one had heard of in 1965. Men made them do it. At roughly the
same time women began getting breast implants, which men also made
them do, and then suing about it. In the same period they began having
induced memories of being raped or satanically abused by their
fathers. Men again. The psychotherapy racket grew like kudzu, a sure
sign of deep unhappiness over something.
All of this is recent. You
have to be fifty to remember women who were resilient, sane,
psychically strong and, within the limits of an often sorry existence,
content. But whatever the answer, guys, the problem isn't yours.
Spend a year overseas, however
you have to do it. For smart, classy, just plain glorious women who
often speak English, try Singapore. Argentina is splendid. Many places
are. You would be amazed. See what's out there before you marry a
gringa with her Inner Susan, who will one day burst from her chest
like one of those beaked space-aliens in the movies, dripping venom.
They're death.
* Orlando Sentinel, July 1
