J is for Juxtaposition

Two things happened recently that are interesting in their juxtaposition;

The first thing was that someone sent me a note with various links pointing out how many women advertising in the singles markets specify that they do not want divorced men, and especially not divorced men who have had kids.

Do you get that? While enjoying the vast powers that the western world lavishes upon women – in this case the right to pauperize and enslave men while simultaneously stripping them of their children – they are not willing to take on men who have become the victims of this power.

They only want the richest fruit, the fresh spoils, oil from the first squeezing – the extra-virgin man, still full of assets, income and energy.

Not for them the men who have been already plundered by women just like themselves.
Did someone protest? Did someone say that I don’t know that these women, who don’t want to date divorced men, are plunderers?

If they are not plunderers, not hoping to find themselves as slave-owners, why are they insisting only on the rich spoils? If they really want a nice man, why insist that he never have been stripped? Clearly, the assets are what they are asking for. And if they are not abusers, not oppressors, where are their voices speaking out against the enslavement of men?

No, every day they step over the unshaved, divorced man who sleeps by their door, who has no place to live because he has been stripped of all his assets, and can no longer work profitably because the government takes the majority of his income. They walk past the single father who is desperately trying to connect with his child on his once-every-two-weeks visitation. They ignore the quiet divorced man in the office, whose shabby suit and threadbare ties reflect the meager subsistence that the courts allow him. They are on the prowl for fresh meat.

Fresh meat! It’s out there!

And they complain that there are no available men – but what they mean is that there are no rich merchant ships to plunder, no fat gazelles nearby to eviscerate. No, these women are plunderers. They might hide behind religion, or family, or concerns about how difficult life might be when you have to balance budgets, and worry about step-children, but the fact is that they are the predators, who stand silently while men are pillaged by others of their clan, while always thirsting for blood, always sniffing the air for the scent of prey, always hunting, hunting, hunting for the next ripe victim.

Of course, as in all ecosystems, there is escalation of tactics on the side of the prey-animal too, and this is where the second thing in my ‘juxtaposition’ comes in:

I also, just recently ran into a small network of my male school chums that I had fallen out of touch with. These people are today pillars of their communities – businessmen, teachers, peace officers… And not one of them has ever been married. One considered it briefly. I raised the issue with them – but they couldn’t really say why they never married when they were young – they saw the girls going out with the bad-boys, and not them. And today, well, today they are looking at their nest-eggs, and looking forward to their retirement, and planning to travel the world, and do some of the other things that they always wanted to do.

They are NOT looking for long-term relationships. They see that as a quick way to find themselves chained to a treadmill until they die – even in ‘successful’ marriages. So here they are, a small group of very happy, attractive, successful men, all looking forward to their retirement, and not willing to get entangled with someone who can at a whim strip them of everything that they have worked for, and their prospects for an enjoyable retirement.

The prey animals have discovered where the predators are lying in wait – in the traditional breeding grounds of the species - marriage. So, naturally, they are avoiding those areas. Instead they go for brief, anonymous relationships, and the institution of marriage dies a slow and horrible death.

And there is your juxtaposition – on the one hand, women insisting on men who have never been married, and on the other, men, wisely insisting that they will never marry.

My best to you in your struggles!
-M