The Good Men Project reprints my “Cuckolding is the Worst Thing that Can Ever Happen to a Man” piece today. And the most thoughtful philosophical response to the moral dilemmas raised by the “spermgate” story comes from Lynn Gazis-Sax at her blog: Of DNA and Honesty. Excerpt:
No, you don’t get to walk away because she has more birth control options than you do, or because women are sometimes as imperfect about using the pill as men are about using condoms, or because she might have legally had the option of abortion. If there’s a baby, and you’re responsible, you don’t get to walk away. You use your last clear ethical chance to avoid being a father, the one that doesn’t hurt an actual helpless human being, and if you miss that chance, you suck up and be responsible.
But it really doesn’t strike me as too much for the man to ask, in return, that he get an accurate report on how likely he is to be the father, and when he might want a paternity test. And, in the interest of having men respect their obligation to be father to their children, it seems fair enough, to me, that their faith in the system not be undercut.
And the Good Men Project has a new columnist, Mark D. White. His Friday column looks at why some men prefer women who are less accomplished, and he pushes back against the charge that it’s all about masculine ego. Rather, he notes that many very successful women feel a socially-imposed need to be with an even more successful man — which then puts intense pressure on everyone involved.
I don’t agree with everything he says (and my experience has been different than his), but it’s a very interesting piece and Mark’s is a welcome voice on board at GMP. Check out How Professional Women Can Objectify Men (and Why Waitresses Don’t).
I glanced over the column by Mark White–he’s missing a big calculation in why successful women want even more successful men, but that’s not too shocking; I have yet to meet a man to whom this realization ever occurred on his own. That realization is, women spend their entire lives internalizing that women are innately inferior to men in terms of all things we consider required for “professional success;” we are hammered by this large and varied set of messages relating to it from birth (I’m not exaggerating) onward. So, those of us who do actually manage to be “professionally successful,” have that conditioning partly and involuntarily broken–clearly, we are now just as good as a man–just as tough, just as smart, just as efficient and go-getting, etc. etc.
And then we’re dating, and the men in question are clearly expecting all the usual relationship-and-ego-massaging that women are supposed to provide during the courtship phase…and, well, that’s difficult to provide, when you have found out irrevocably that he really isn’t superior in all those important ways to you after all–he isn’t as tough, as smart, as efficient, as go-getting, etc. because the hard indicator of that (professional success)–you have more of it. So when he starts (often unconsciously, to be fair) demanding the massaging, we may or may not attempt to comply, and if we do, the mockery frequently does leak out, because…omg, really? Even though you’re not superior I still have to do this to please you..?
No, non-professional women aren’t “more interested in your character,” Mark, than professional women are. Both are equally interested in your character. Non-professional women are simply more likely to accept your characteristic need for the massage as the natural order of things, since they haven’t bucked it themselves. Professional women aren’t.
Pretty much everyone has made the same point that Gazis-Sax made in that passage. The only thing everyone else is throwing out there is that Jill* was immoral and you see nothing wrong with her immorality.
The morality post seems off base. If a man is accepting that a child may result due to contraceptive failure on his part or his partners each time they have sex then surely a woman should be accepting the same scenario that sex can result in pregnancy. As you and others have stated that one party bears a non equal burden is just biology (9 months of pregnancy). If we accept the other view that abortion for non-medical reasons is a reasonable position then we simply shift the unfair burden to a party with fewer choices. If we give women unlimited rights to abortion for non-medical reasons then giving men an opt out for similar reasons seems fairer overall as it shares the inequality better. If you want to address the unfairness to women of the uncertainty make the non-bearing parent an opt in role which also resolves issues like Ted because he would have signed up to be a parent waiving his paternity test or similar conditional responsibility.
In terms of professional dating the script doesn’t seem to change even when women break the stereotypes. Its the traditional version of phmt in that women can break the rules and men are supposed to adhere to then or be abused / devalued (as an example Hugos xbox posts).
Normally I’d totally weigh in on the other topic too, but as far as I can tell, I have absolutely nothing to say that hasn’t been said already by like 200 people.
at least.
@lisakansas: There’s a saying that a woman who figures that she’s too good for any of the men she meets may find that she’s right… and left. Be that as it may, the whole point of pursuing a relationship is for both people to have the opportunity to get and to give those “massages.” If someone’s got particular hang-ups about not wanting to do that… Well, maybe they’re not in the right place for a relationship at that time, or to be in a relationship with that person. Maybe their ability to “massage” only does flow to those men who are “superior” to them in all those “important ways” (your words), which more or less demonstrates the point that Mark White was making. It shouldn’t be a zero-sum game, and I’d wonder why anyone who thinks that way would think that anyone would find them attractive.
As to whether Mark is right about professional women as such, I suppose the jury is out, and, as Hugo points out, experiences differ. I think he’s quite correct though that, at least as a threshold issue in deciding whether one would want to ask a woman out, her professional success, wealth, or power matter a lot less to men than other attributes. I don’t know whether women assume that it matters to men more than it really does, but claims that men are “turned off by” or “intimidated” by just how gosh-darned empowerful professional women would seem to be driven more by rationalization and wishful thinking than anything (personally, I’ve never heard either men nor women saying this particular thing, but it gets repeated a lot). It’s nice to be with someone with enough brains to carry on scintillating dinner conversation (the absence of that does get tiresome, fast), but it’s myopic to assume that everyone with intelligence or ambition necessarily channels that into a highly-compensated professional career. and if having that career leaves someone with less time, energy, or a broad-base of interests to be all that much fun to be with, that’s not anyone else’s fault.
@Tom:
@lisakansas: There’s a saying that a woman who figures that she’s too good for any of the men she meets may find that she’s right… and left.
Yes, I’ve heard of that saying.
It’s never been delivered to me personally, though–I’ve only ever been personally lectured for not having high enough standards in my potential mate choices. Both men and women have lectured me about this throughout my lifetime. It has given me an interesting perspective on the whole situation.
Be that as it may, the whole point of pursuing a relationship is for both people to have the opportunity to get and to give those “massages.”
Men very rarely give that specific kind of massage. Any woman pursuing a relationship who is expecting that is overwhelmingly going to be doomed to disappointment…frankly, I don’t know any women who do expect it or have that as something they think they’re going to get out of a relationship with a man. Now, I agree, men do pursue relationships, specifically (not just sexual encounters) to get that specific category of massage (among other motivators, of course).
If someone’s got particular hang-ups about not wanting to do that… Well, maybe they’re not in the right place for a relationship at that time, or to be in a relationship with that person.
Then the majority of men are never in the right place or right time or with the right person, since as I said above, they generally don’t give that kind of massage ever.
Which seems like a silly assertion. As for women–indeed you’re correct, if a woman doesn’t feel up to the professional-ego massage and the man she’s in the courtship phase with requires it to move forward, she is in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person. That’s self-evident.
Maybe their ability to “massage” only does flow to those men who are “superior” to them in all those “important ways” (your words),which is which more or less demonstrates the point that Mark White was making. It shouldn’t be a zero-sum game, and I’d wonder why anyone who thinks that way would think that anyone would find them attractive.
The point he appeared to be trying to make to me is that he should still be getting the professionally related ego-massage regardless of the relative professional statuses of himself and the woman in question and when he doesn’t, he turns to waitresses for consolation, since they are willing to give it out (until he informs them that he’s thinking of throwing it all away, at which point they too become hesitant, it sounded like). I can’t really relate what you just said to that point–could you clarify?
@lisakansas:
“The point he appeared to be trying to make to me is that he should still be getting the professionally related ego-massage regardless of the relative professional statuses of himself and the woman in question and when he doesn’t, he turns to waitresses for consolation, since they are willing to give it out (until he informs them that he’s thinking of throwing it all away, at which point they too become hesitant, it sounded like). I can’t really relate what you just said to that point–could you clarify?”
Sure, I think everyone should be getting the “massage” in a supporting LTR with whatever it is they’re doing. I don’t think that there’s any sort of “gradient” between partners’ relative professional or other statuses that “entitles” one to more or less of the other, and acting as if there is is a recipe for trouble. One person could be a lawyer and the other a performance artist, and I still think that they owe it to each other to support each of their endeavors. If your experience is that men haven’t done that very well, I’m sorry to hear that. I was married for six years and put a lot of energy and support into my ex’s efforts, Quixotic though they turned out to be, to become a nurse while I was working on college and law school (that our priorities were different and she ultimately wasn’t able to return the support in meaningful ways was a significant factor in our splitting up). So I guess everyone’s mileage may vary.
To give men credit, I’m not sure it occurs to them that women value that particular massage. Men do have down that women want to be praised for their beauty, and they engage in the courtship-phase appearance-based ego-massage of making statements like “It’s so amazing to me that I’m here with someone as beautiful as you,” etc. Now, there are men to whom it might occur but they prefer to downgrade the professional achievements anyway–my first two spouses, I will say, the first of whom flatly told me that no matter what I did, my work would always be easier and less meaningful than his was (which was his reasoning for why I must always be the one to take all the time off work to care for sick children and household issues). And the second, who definitely liked the power imbalance that making twice as much money as I did gave him and the unlikelihood that that was ever going to change, as he was both (a) ten years older than me, with the associated ten more years of professional experience and (b) his family had put him through college straight out of high school, which meant he had started his career at age 21, whereas I had had a much more difficult path to college and not graduated til I was 27.
However, my current husband always gives me the professionally-related massage, as I do him.
We’ve been in a relationship for five years now, and the last ten months is the first time he’s ever made more than me–when we first met, I made nearly half again what he did–he now makes about ten percent more than I do–but we’ve always had a mutual professionally-related admiration society going. I suspect that the usual lack of realization that a woman might value that was mitigated in him by a feeling of shared experiences–we both grew up in dirt-poor, dysfunctional families that not only didn’t help us reach professional status, but often actively hindered us. The mutuality of that respect from the get-go was a strong factor in our courtship-phase emotional bonding, no question.
In terms of the appearance-based ego-massage, Hugo has written extensively on how badly men yearn for that too, and how they react in not-helpful ways in terms of forwarding relationships when they feel they aren’t getting it.
An interesting gender compare-and-contrast situation there in conjuction with the professional issue…if only I wasn’t being knocked flat by late-term pregnancy to the point where I n-e-v-e-r blog anymore, I would be so inspired to run with this. 
As a general rule, I think ego-massaging should go for “give ‘em what they ain’t gettin’ otherwise.” That, and be original and memorable.
I posted this at the good men project, but the comment it was replying to has been downvoted so the whole thing is invisible.
Let me try again here, it’s a question for Hugo:
Can you explain why Hugo had no obligation to tell Ted?
Can you give examples of other situations in society where Hugo has no obligation to help another person in danger from a third party?
Hugo walks by an alley and sees one man mugging another man. Hugo has a cell phone and a gun. What are Hugo’s obligations?
Hugo walks by an alley and sees one man raping a woman. Hugo has a cell phone and a gun. What are Hugo’s obligations?
Hugo walks by an alley and sees one man raping a woman. Hugo has a nothing but his jogging outfit. What are Hugo’s obligations?
Hugo is at a restaurant filled with customers and sees another customer choking. Hugo knows the Heimlich Maneuver and has a cell phone. What are Hugo’s obligations?
Hugo is a professor at a college and discovers a professor having sex with a freshman. What are Hugo’s obligations?
Hugo is a neighbor of an elderly person, Hugo becomes aware that person is the target of a pigeon drop scam. What are Hugo’s obligations?
Hugo is a neighbor of a 35 year old man, Hugo becomes aware that person is the target of a pigeon drop scam. What are Hugo’s obligations?
Hugo is a neighbor of a 19 year old girl, Hugo becomes aware that person is the target of a pigeon drop scam. What are Hugo’s obligations?
If Ted had been properly informed, he may have chosen not to have gotten married. Regardless of his satisfaction with his children, Ted may even now regret marriage. Ted, without the marriage, may have been headed on a different life path.
Hugo helped saddle Ted with financial, emotional, medical debt that could reasonably have been taken on my Hugo. Hugo played a huge role in the possible total derailment of Ted’s life.
Hugo knew a great deal of information vital to Ted’s being able to make a fully informed decision. And Hugo willingly, knowingly withheld that.
Why do you say that Hugo had no obligation to tell Ted of the ongoing deception?
I truly don’t understand that point.
Hugo, what do you perceive now as your obligations back then to Ted?
Mark White’s experience of white-collar men preferring blue-collar women as partners is the polar opposite of mine. My experience as a blue-collar woman is that white-collar professional men are largely unwilling to consider a woman without a college degree as a partner. One-night-stand, yes. Temporary fling, yes. But a real partner, to be introduced to friends, co-workers, family, colleagues? No. Make that, “Hell, no.” The attitude that Tom describes above as, “It’s nice to be with someone with enough brains to carry on scintillating dinner conversation (the absence of that does get tiresome, fast), but it’s myopic to assume that everyone with intelligence or ambition necessarily channels that into a highly-compensated professional career.—is an outlying practice. Classism is still alive and well.
With that said, I’m a single parent to one child. I find it curious that folks take for granted that I am not seeking to have more children as an unpartnered woman—that it’s assumed that of course I wouldn’t deliberately seek to have more kids in my so-far-so-good-knock-wood financial state (and daily-life time crunch)….yet, when I say that I’m not interested in so-and-so, their male friend who’s a really great guy, and he’s really bright, he just hasn’t “found himself” yet (despite being over forty) and isn’t really interested in having a full-time day-job because he’s (a)busy writing the Great American Novel, or (b)waiting for his big break in the music business, which has been right around the corner for the past two or three decades, or (c)doesn’t want to be a “sellout” to the nameless, faceless, “System”—that’s for chumps…all of a sudden I’m a selfish bitch, and/or too picky. No.
I’d be really interested in seeing Prof. White’s definition of what constitutes a “successful” and/or “professional” woman. As in, how high her earnings have to be to be put in that category. 100K? Because the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that educated women are still earning less than similarly educated men, and the higher the educational level, the wider the earnings gap.
The fact remains that many jobs are still sex-segregated, and that earnings for “women’s jobs” tend to be lower than earnings for “men’s jobs.” And hell, he’s an academic, so he should be well aware that women in academia aren’t getting tenure at the same rate as men.
So, how many of those “professional” women are really earning the same kind of breadwinning wages that their male counterparts are? Think maybe that explains a certain reluctance to take on a partner with significantly lower earnings? I’m a tradeswoman, and can’t help but notice that all of the younger male members of my Local (those under 45) are married or partnered to women who have similar earning power—maybe a little more, maybe a little less, but they deliberately choose to not get seriously involved with women who aren’t bringing the same money to the table that they are. No one accuses them of being gold-diggers or selfish—deliberately seeking a two-income household is considered prudent, forward-thinking.
And that’s worth mentioning, because while tradespeople earn a decent living, it isn’t comparable to what the higher-octane professionals are making (very few of whom are women, might I add). It’s more comparable to what the average woman with a Master’s degree is making. If it is prudent for tradespeople, with our level of income, to select for a two-income household….why shouldn’t it be for white-collar women who aren’t earning the same money as comparably-educated men? Professional, white-collar women still earn less than their male counterparts in the same occupations, even when they outnumber the men in those occupations.
This penultimate sentence of his is really telling: Just as women rightly want to be valued for more than their looks, we men want to be appreciated for more than our job titles, resumes, or salaries—and many of us feel that working women are more likely to see us for who we are, not for what we’ve done or how much we make.
Did you see what he did there? Used the term “working women” instead of “working class women”? (“those working class women—they’re the real hard workers; not like you spoiled-brat, overeducated white-collar broads!) Ain’t that a groove? Tell me again why I shouldn’t have the feeling that his real goal is to use working class women as a wedge to get what he wants from the women he so clearly prefers—women of his class status? That he is resentful that he doesn’t get the opportunity to play “Betty Draper” to Some Woman’s “Don”? And sees this as a personal moral failing of the women he seeks out, rather than of the prevailing practices of sexism in the nonunionized, predominantly-male professional world—that still impact women harder than men?