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A common Hollywood theme is the single mother. While her "ex" is off sleeping with "sluts," she slaves at a "9 to 5," feeds and cares for the children, and makes a good case for killing the bum who abandoned her.
How often is this really the case? The popular stereotype of the mean-hearted man who callously dumps his poor wife for a "pretty young thing" is a lie. According to Shere Hite, women -- the "victims" -- do most of the dumping: "Ninety-one percent of divorces are initiated by women, according to this study -- contrary to the popular stereotype that 'men leave women.'" (Women and Love, St. Martin's Press mass market edition, 1989, Shere Hite, p 405)
During the seventies, Hollywood promoted this with several "liberated women" stories, in which a dumbfounded "male chauvinist pig" stood with his mouth hanging agape while his wife proudly announced she was going to divorce him. No, it wasn't his fault, he didn't do anything wrong. It was her. She had changed. Now she needs her own space and time to discover herself and be her own person.
Packing her bags, she left him with the kids and rode off into the sunset to go back to school (no one said who was going to pay for her tuition) or to get a glamorous job (no one worried about where or how she would get her training), or she was just going out to be a "free spirit."
Being a "free spirit" in the movies is very rewarding. In real life, however, things don't necessarily work that way. Many women discover the opportunities men seem to get so easily come only as the result of determination and hard work. And their personally satisfying but low-paying jobs don't support the kind of spending they enjoyed on their husbands' higher incomes.
In the real world, women by the thousands are learning what "liberation" is like: "In the year following a divorce, the woman's standard of living falls, on average, by 73%. The man's standard of living rises by 42%." (The Great Divide, Daniel E. Van Weiss, p 21) Pop-feminists believe this is the primary cause of the "feminization of poverty," that it's men's fault, and that the government should force men to make up the difference.
If men are to blame for the financial repercussions women suffer after they divorce their husbands, then the entire women's movement isn't about equal rights at all. Realizing equal rights do not automatically guarantee equality, Catharine MacKinnon admits this. (Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law , Catherine A. MacKinnon, p 65) The differences between women and men, she believes, create an automatic bias against women. Hence, equal rights are not enough, and she wants to force men to subsidize women. Anything less is cause for criticism: "The group realities that make women more in need of alimony are not permitted to matter, because only individual factors, gender-neutrally considered, may matter." (Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law , Catherine A. MacKinnon, p 35)
Should gender matter anymore?
In traditional patriarchal society, gender mattered. The resulting roles worked because, within the framework of the time, they fulfilled both individual and societal needs. Technological advances, however, made it possible for the patriarchal arrangement to evolve: It takes less time to "tend to the cooking," and the provider role (work) is less gender-specific.
But this isn't enough for pop-feminists. They want it all, they want it right now, and they want men to give it to them. That means they must require men to support women in marriage, and subsidize them outside of marriage with alimony.
Alimony
The rationale for alimony might be stated as, "She earned a chunk of his future income by providing emotional and sexual support during the years he worked to achieve a position where he could earn his present income, and he should now compensate her for that investment." There is some logic in this. But didn't she already receive something from him in return? Wasn't the standard of living she enjoyed, the one that fell by 73 percent when she divorced him, worth ... 73 percent of something? Didn't that contribute to her well-being?
If a woman's past investment in her ex-husband is worth something for which he must now compensate her, then what of his past investment in her? Shouldn't the courts allow him to deduct this from her alimony? Shouldn't she compensate him for what he lost when the marriage ended?
When marriage ends, a man loses the sexual services of his ex-wife. In all fairness, if she has some right to his present and future income, then he has some right to her present and future sexual services. Either she should provide such services herself, or arrange for a surrogate to provide them in her stead. (My thanks to Frank Cranbourne for pointing this out to me.) Conjugal rights have value, and so long as pop-feminists and the courts disregard the husband's loss of this value, men are being victimized by a system that favors women.
Women who scoff at this will reveal to what extent they have objectified men as walking wallets - women can't be investments because their value is not measured in dollars, but the worth of a man is. As Warren Farrell notes, that's because women view men as success objects. (Why Men Are the Way They Are, Warren Farrell, Ph.D., p 182)
If men should compensate women for what they lose in divorce, then women should also compensate men for what they lose in divorce. If pop-feminists deny this, then not only do they expose their objectification of men as walking wallets, but they also relinquish every moral right to any form of alimony.
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