Men 2020: The Real Story

Noted research psychologist and gender scholar Dr. Peggy Drexler released a post at Huffpo recently entitled Men 2020. In it she tries to portray the struggles of men in our society - a point in her favor - while attempting to dismiss most of the current crisis as mere "growing pains" as we accept our new, diminished lot in life - minus half a point.

But it did suggest that a look ahead might be in order.  Since I am also, in addition to being a humble pornographer, sex nerd, author, bon vivant, old married guy, also a science fiction writer and futurist, I thought I would give some thought to the subject of the Future of Men.  Dr. Drexler gets some parts of it right, but she relates it in a slightly patronizing (matronizing?) manner, and I don't feel her conclusions are taking in the scope of the problem.

Luckily, I did a chapter on this very subject for the Manosphere book, and this looks like a good place for an excerpt, of sorts.

Let me begin this way: the situation is both more dire and less dire than Dr. Drexler reports. First, while the
 "confusion" she talks about men suffering in contemporary society is real, that's not quite the right word for it.  More "confusion, anger, resentment, and suspicion".  Everywhere men look, the misandrous pronouncements of media are throwing us under the bus.  We're obsolete, we've been told.  We no longer matter.

Bullshit.  We matter quite a bit, and you ladies are about to learn just how much we can matter.  More, the people we matter the most to is you, and you are, collectively, fucking things us.  We're not happy about it, but like Dr. Drexler said, we're adapting . . . just not in the ways you want us to.

She tries to hold out the Millennials as examples of men "bettering" themselves.  She gives several examples that seem to rate that measurement purely in terms of how much Millennial men are willing to make themselves more useful servants to womankind . . . but very little that considers the innate masculine values.

True, she points out the increase in time spent fathering that the Millennial men seem to display as a sign of progress, and I cannot disagree.  My heart is warmed with the number of young men I've seen take an active hand in the fathering of their children, largely (in my observation) due to the utter lack or estrangement of fathering in their own lives.  

These young men are, indeed, committed to family, as they have seen (despite its innate fragility in our era) how family is one of the few constants in our lives.  They want kids.  They want wives.  They want wives . . . who won't divorce them.  And they want wives they can stand.

So you can expect them to be a bit choosy.  Hell, we should encourage them to hold on to that C-Card as long as they can, hold out for the best deal possible, the highest quality woman . . . and not settle for less.  Teach them how to make the mommy-wannabes come to them, and demonstrate what they bring to the table.

But as I said, the future is bright.  The Millennials are still young.  They are still impressionable.  And they haunt the internet like ghosts.

And the internet is where the Manosphere is.  For the young men of the Millennial generation, things are looking bright, believe it or not.  If they play their cards right, everyone will learn Game, the future fathers of America will use their pump-and-dump Puerarch palls to weed out the poorer specimens of femininity, and focus on the few high-quality future wives in the bunch.

Do it, dudes.  Be PICKY.  Don't settle for less.  And you can afford to be.  You know why?  Because when I said you were in high demand, I wasn't tugging your jockstrap.

You see, within the Sexual Market Place, Dads are more highly valued than Cads, but around the time you're getting married few of you know which one you are, and the women in your lives are banking a lot more on your potential return than on your present value.  If you decide to go the Cad route, then your best bet is to get a vasectomy, learn Game, and hump everything in a skirt for the rest of your life.

But if you decide to go the Dad route, and are serious about it, then you build your value and your potential value now . . . and focus on searching diligently for a woman worthy enough to match your level of commitment.  And that ain't easy.  Luckily, thanks to this bit of light-hearted banter, your value is about to skyrocket.  Next, she tells us that men of the future . . .

They will be androgynous followers of a new and superior model of female leadership.

She says that like its a good thing.  It's not, for either gender.  If you want any indication of where the status quo will actually lead us if we go down Dr. Drexler's happy, testosterone-light path, we need look no further than Japan.  And the Herbivores.

If you want to see what Dr. Drexler's "new and improved Millennial men" look like, here's a perfect example. See if you really want to face this future, ladies.  And fellas, this is what you'll have to compete against in the future if you want to be even a mediocre dad.  You might be the worst bull in the herd, the roughest-looking pup in the pack, the puniest bear in the den, but at least you, Gentlemen, are carnivores.  This is what your sisters have to look forward to.

Excerpted from the Manosphere book:

The Sōshoku-kei

In Japan, you have the phenomenon of the herbivore, the sōshoku-kei.  This is a whole class of Japanese men who shun marriage and even girlfriends in favor of an austere lifestyle that includes indulgence in personal hygiene products, like the American Metrosexual.  Only the herbivore takes the idea to the extreme . . . and has absolutely no desire for any kind of romantic commitment whatsoever. 

A 2010 survey in Japan revealed that over 1/3 of Japanese men viewed themselves that way.  Among men in their 20s and 30s, over 70% do. 

Philosopher Masahiro Morioka redefined sōshoku-kei danshi as men who are "the nice guys of a new generation who do not aggressively seek meat, but instead prefer to eat grass side by side with the opposite gender."  A nation of docile, non-aggressive men completely content not to ogle women in public, but do it in the privacy of their cubes on their iPhones. The feminist utopia.

 So how are the women of Japan greeting this phenomenon?  According to traditional feminist ideology, they should be welcoming it with flowers, relieved that, at long last, the power of the hated traditional Japanese patriarchy is broken and women can assume their proper role as co-rulers over the placid island domain.  Right?  Women should be in a rape-free, utterly fearless state of gender freedom.

Only . . . not so much.

Japanese women are not amused by the sōshoku-kei danshi.  In fact, they’re pretty pissed off.  Instead of leaping for the golden opportunity to achieve and succeed in one of the biggest post-industrial economies in the world that this should be providing them, as feminism said they should, Japanese women are bitter about the fact that they have virtually no hope of having children. 

And you thought Western women are having a hard time finding decent husbands. 

The men they meet might be interested in a platonic date, but trying to get them to initiate sex is difficult, if not impossible.  Sōshoku danshi are the ultimate Beta orbitors . . . only they don’t really ever want to land. 

Why are the sōshoku danshi instructive? Precisely because Japan is one of the biggest post-industrial economies in the world.  Japan has pioneered much of what we can expect socially, in the context of the post-industrial economy.   You can look at the metropoli of Japan and see the way things will eventually look in America.  And while it might be an ideological victory for feminism, it would be really, really bad for women in general.

The herbivores have taken the Puerarchy to its logical conclusion.  They grew up as the sons of the 1980s salariman, the loyal and hard-working company men who built Japan into the financial, industrial, and technological powerhouse it is today.  They also spent the vast majority of their time at work while their lonely wives browbeat their children into preparation for the all-important college exams.  For cultural reasons, the sons got the lion’s share of this attention.  And the pressure.

The sōshoku danshi have withdrawn their participation in greater Japanese society, because they see no incentive to pursue the traditional marriage and family.  Their distant, overworked fathers provided no guidance or impetus for having a family.  Their economy and the spoiled, entitled nature of Japanese girls have given the sōshoku danshi no incentive whatsoever to procreate.  None. 

The extra demands a wife and children place on a Japanese worker are tremendous, and social expectation mandates that he work his ass off to support them.  The sōshoku danshi is utterly disillusioned with the highly structured, highly gendered achievement, the high expectations of Japanese women, and far more content to pursue quiet hobbies and masturbate than actually go on a date.

That’s a bigger deal than it might seem.  The Japanese have been the leaders in masturbation technology for decades – we had a short-lived dominance due to the Fleshlight, but after that Japan blew us away with the Tenga.

The Tenga, for the uninformed, is a disposable egg-shaped plastic male masturbator that you can buy in a vending machine for a couple of bucks, use a dozen times and then throw away.  The Tenga egg comes in many different styles, offering different types of stimulation, but one thing is agreed among all who use them: it’s a better blowjob for a cheaper price than you can get anywhere.

The Tenga allows the sōshoku danshi – or any man – a way to slip away, knock one off, and get back to work without the necessity of a woman involved.  It’s cheap, it’s convenient, and it won’t insist on wearing your sweaters.  And it’s getting more sophisticated every iteration.  The device has such an appeal that the government is considering regulating them, to help encourage the birthrate. 

That’s important.  Japanese women aren’t the only ones upset with the sōshoku danshi.  The phenomenon is having real social repercussions.  It’s such a big deal, in fact, that the Japanese government is actively trying to discourage sōshoku-kei behaviors, because it’s leading to a dramatic decline in the birthrate. 

And if they can’t sustain the birthrate, then the weight of caring for the Japanese elderly will fall to a smaller and smaller number of working Japanese.  So the Japanese government has offered generous cash rewards and tax incentives for young couples to marry and have babies. 

Which puts the average young Japanese woman in the unenviable position of having to work to pay taxes to subsidize some other woman’s ability to have kids.  

Think about it: you have to do overtime to keep your expensive apartment, but the girl down the hall gets time off and extra money to raise her new baby, since she actually found a husband.  And you’re paying for it.  Bitter, yet?

The sōshoku-kei are particularly instructive because they have, for all practical purposes, totally invested in the feminist ideal of true equality between the sexes.  They have institutionalized Betadom.  They have done their best to remove the complicating influence of women from their lives.  And they have succeeded, regardless of what it does to Japanese society. 

In the ultimate passive-aggressive protest against the social expectations, the sōshoku danshi are doing the bare minimum of what is required of them and spending the rest of the time playing video games or whacking off to porn or watching tv or on the internet.  Anything but going out and talking to girls.

So what’s a girl to do?  Go to a prostitute.

Well, kinda.  While the Japanese hostess bars are pretty well-known to Western businessmen, they’re specific to that clientele.  Native Japanese men go to similar places, but reserved for Japanese only.  It’s not personal, it’s not racist, it’s just . . . well, it’s just Japanese.  Some of these parlors are merely entertainment, some are involved in some kind of paid prostitution.  But recently a new kind of hostess bar has arisen, one designed to cater to desperately horny and romantically forlorn young women.

These bars hire well-built Alpha studs to linger and play “host”.  For a fee a woman can have the “boyfriend experience”, an attentive man who listens to her and flatters her and pays her attention.  And she buys champagne.  A lot of highly overpriced champagne.  Between the fees and the drinks, a young woman can drop a thousand dollars in a night if she isn’t cautious.  If you feel outraged by the cold manipulations of American PUAs, ladies, consider these fellows. 

They’re handsome, they’re hunks, and they usually grow to despise the girls they’re paid to flatter.  American PUAs have nothing on the brutally cold way these men abuse the affections and expectations of vulnerable young girls.

It’s not unheard of for these girls, many of whom think it’s hopeless for a real, regular boy to find her attractive with the lure of the sōshoku kei on the horizon, to run up debts to these bars in the tens of thousands of dollars.  Often they must become prostitutes themselves to have any hope of paying off the debt. 

Ironically the girls who needed to pay to get a handsome boy’s attention end up getting paid to give head to sweaty old businessmen their fathers’ age.   

The next generation of Japanese will be much, much smaller, and the result of the few “carnivores” who managed to have kids.  Think about it: really smart, really aggressive, really rich Japanese kids who suddenly have twice as much room on their island as their grandparent's generation, giant robots . . . and a lot of aggression to work out.

(I'm sure that will end well.)

End Excerpt

So that's what's in store, Ladies.  That's the androgynous utopia you envision, one in which women are so entitled and demanding that men would rather avoid them altogether rather than procreate with them.  One in which men check out of the active progress of society in favor of selfish and self-interested pursuits.  One in which your daughter's chances of getting married will actually be worse than yours, and her chances of staying married will be comparable to dying in a plane crash.  And her chances of actually reproducing, thanks to the USIRIG device, will be even less.  No husband for her.  No grandkids for you.

Will Americans and Europeans go the same route?  Perhaps . . . but I think the unique cultural attitudes in both places will mitigate the problem.  That's good news . . . for men.   The downside is that unlike Japan, there is no strong cultural provision against marrying outside of your culture in America or Europe, which will allow those dudes who do want to tie the knot to do it . . . just not to European or American girls.  

Of course I take issue with this:

If we stopped there it would indicate that we are headed toward a new improved model of males -- kinder, gentler, more accepting and more attached to home and family then men of the past.

That "new and improved" model she's talking about is, again, one in which the value judgement is being made is done so only using female criteria.  What constitutes a "new and improved" male, in Dr. Drexler's opinion, is one who is better able to serve women.  His own desires, values, interests and issues (with the exception of fatherhood, previously discussed) are unimportant to her.  "Kinder and Gentler" are not masculine traits.  "More accepting and More Attached" sure look like code words for "enslaved".

That's key.  That demonstrates what feminist expectations of men are for the future: men who are of service to women are "good", men who aren't are "bad".  Men who pursue their own interests, rejecting a corporate culture in which they are forced to work for the benefit of women, will be told off as slackers and underachievers and shamed for their languorous stay at the Puerarchy.

But honestly, Dr. Drexler, can you blame them?  There is virtually no incentive for young men to achieve, to perform, to dance like a monkey in a game that's rigged against them.  Where they are seen as the "lowest difficulty setting" and ridiculed for their masculinity.  Where the respect their forefathers had is forever denied them because of their gender.  Where they are seen as a constant threat on the street, suspect in the workplace, and punished for every attempt at true achievement.  Where their wives will leave them and their children can be stripped away without their consent.  

That is feminism's legacy to young men.  Blame it on economics if you like, but its as much ideology as income.  

As you have noticed, "It also appears younger men are shying away from relationships."    Further, 

Pew research says that the desire to marry among young women is rising -- with high importance increasing from 28 to 37 percent since 1997. For young men, it dropped from 35 to 29 percent. Theories abound. 

Why yes, yes they do.  I'd have to favor Venker's interpretation here, despite my distaste at doing so (I'm still a progressive, she still works at Fox) but she's dead on: men are avoiding marriage because women have lost touch with their feminine side.

That's it, in a nutshell.  When a woman wants to get married as much as these ladies do, one would think that their interest was in the marriage, not the wedding.  Yet plenty of evidence demonstrates that they just don't know how to be married, thanks to a healthy dearth of plausible role-models and the utter derision the idea is met with among feminist authority figures.   The pages of HuffPo don't celebrate Wives, Dr. Drexler, nor do the articles posted their glorify the idea of being married to a man in the slightest.  Indeed, more often than not they condemn and deride the idea of focusing on marriage, not a career, as if being a corporate drone was the dedicated end-game to the feminist plan.

Y'all can have it.  We're dropping out.

Not all of us, of course.  But the good ones.  The ones who have the understanding to see how badly the deck is stacked against us.  Just read some of my comments from last post.  See the derision the idea of marriage has inspired from my younger male readers.  I hear it often.  More often than I like.  But that's the reason they aren't marrying, Dr. Drexler.  There is no incentive in it for them, not just legally, but emotionally and spiritually.  They have lost faith in relationships over-all, marriage in particular, and largely because what they see in terms of potential mates turns their stomach.

What do you have to say to them?  "No, really, if you marry that woman you're thinking of, then she'll discover her true inner femininity and encourage your masculinity in a self-sustaining system of eternal nuptial bliss!"  That ain't true, and we all know it.  If a woman doesn't start out her marriage in a feminine frame of mind, then she's not going to suddenly grow it, just like she's not going to suddenly become a nymphomaniac if she's been low-sex for her entire life.  

Despite your apparent preference for androgyny, Dr. Drexler, the girls out there hate it in their boyfriends.  Dudes certainly don't find it appealing.  It's humiliating and against our masculine nature.  Only feminism has taught us what happens when a man tries to lead in a relationship (as the 45% of the women, according to your article, apparently want him to do), so we'd rather withdraw and distract ourselves, forget the relationship, and play XBox or whack off rather than pursue a relationship with a woman.  XBox doesn't try to get us to wear make-up . . . oh, sorry, "tinted sunscreen" and want us to pretend we like it.

The fact is, the Millenials are the first generation to have the capacity to liberate themselves from social expectation.  With new reproductive options opening up, a globe full of feminine women eager to have a marriage and a family, not ashamed, and with more means to make a living underachieving outside of the corporate structure, I think you will find more and more Millennial men are going to be checking out and doing their own thing by 2020.  And that "own thing" doesn't involve a suburban ranch, two kids and a future ex-wife.  

It involves a tiki bar/surf shop in the Caribbean somewhere staring at bikinis, or teaching English in Taibei with a hot Chinese girlfriend, or grinding code for the next great generation of software, or building and

racing antique cars, or spending endless hours playing WoW or guitar or just watching YouTube or any number of other "fun" stuff we like that doesn't involve a complicated, demeaning relationship with a Western woman who, in the final analysis, does not have his best long-term interest in mind.

If we have our way, the Millennial men will finally start understanding their own value, to themselves, even if society doesn't value them.  We shall encourage them to drop out, go adventuring, and leave the dreary office life to their sisters while they go in search of a feminine wife or a string of pretty girlfriends.   They will find some fulfilling career that pays them squat and we will encourage them to contribute not a damn thing to the gleaming corporate structure men built and that we are now forever locked out of, to the society who sees them as disposable and valueless, to the culture who treats them as dangerous and stupid, not worthy of respect. 

For women the fall of gender boundaries has meant freedom, choice and opportunity. For men it has meant confusion. The expectations and assumptions that formed the superstructure for manhood for generations has fallen away, with nothing yet emerging to take their place.

Ah, but that's not quite true, Dr. Drexler.  There's not confusion -- there's frustration.  So now these men will do what you encouraged two generations of women to do:  defy gender expectations and steadfastly NOT marry.  NOT reproduce.  NOT achieve.  The current system is not their friend, so they should take their ball and go home.  Men Going Their Own Way, with only a very, very few dedicated future family men expending the effort to wed and breed on purpose.  

And what's this?

Most are adjusting nicely to the withdrawal of past entitlements. They will form the core of 2020 men who compete and win without privilege.

"Outta here!"

 Ah, no.  That's wishful thinking, I'm afraid, Dr. Drexler.  If that is your assessment of modern young men and their attitudes toward the future, I suggest that you are not looking closely enough.  What you see as "adjusting nicely" is just the parts you want to see.  The parts you don't want to see are still there, and WE sure as hell see them.

"Mediocre or Average?
Just what do I want in a future ex-wife?"

If young women today want to get married but have no interest in being wives, the young men today don't want to be their husbands.  Nor do they want to commit to a society where they will STILL be accused of using privilege in competition in 2020, STILL be given unfair handicaps to overcome said "privilege" and then STILL be considered undervalued, atavistic, disposable.  Young men will not "compete" in the future, Dr. Drexler, because women in aggregate (which you feel will be dominating the leadership positions, due to their inherent superiority . . .) do not value competition.

Therefore they will seek to further handicap the men in the office with competition-reducing measures and consensus-building organizations that are designed to keep achievement from happening or male leadership from being valued.  No glory, no value, no honor, not in a system where the rules are set one way for women, another for men.

We will not compete with that.  We might show up, work 8 hours, and take home a paycheck, but compete?

Fuck that, boys.  Save it for something important.  Like building your own fighting robot.  

That's the proper response to the whole "decline of men" meme.  Demonstrate to the women gloating about their "victory" that they won through forfeit, because we just don't want to play in a game that's fixed, so we didn't show up to play.  While they re-defined femininity to involve corporate achievement and team-building exercises, we will re-define masculinity to involve the issues and interests that are ours, and ours alone.

And that doesn't mean sitting our fat asses in a cube farm so that our female boss at work is happy and our female boss at home is happy and we're fucking miserable.

The time for that has passed.  Now we live in the time of the Manosphere, where clues to every man's masculine destiny are just a click away.

My prediction is that we will see the rise of Gamma and Delta and Omega "herbavores" arise, but not quite like in Japan.  But we will also see a lot of those boys ditching their fears, learning Game, hitting the gym, dropping their responsibilities and catching a ride someplace interesting to go meet a girl who's not so complicated and do something a lot less permanent than marriage.  While I agree with Dr. Drexler that going back is not happening, her vision of "going forward" is not a happy one, even for the male Progressive.  But that's not the only way forward, fellas.  Androgyny and female domination aren't necessarily in your future -- there's an escape clause!


Dr. Drexler says:

Others will struggle: some to the point that they simply choose to opt out of the competition -- in education, careers, even relationships.

I maintain that this is not a struggle, Gentlemen: the answer is powerfully abundant.  This world does not have your interests at heart, nor do the women around you.  You will NOT be rewarded for being a good and diligent employee.  You will NOT be rewarded for being a loving and capable husband.  You will NOT be valued for being an attentive and involved father, no matter what they say.  And you will NOT see an over-abundance of marital comfort as a result of your dedication to laundry and dishes.  It's a lie, a damnable lie.

So prepare yourself to drop out.  Roosh did.  Jonathan Frost did.  There is a world of adventure beyond the jaded vaginas of the UMC white college-educated woman.  The corporate feminists who insist that a career can come before family, leave them alone.  Pretend they have dicks.  They might as well have -- they damn sure aren't going to be the kind of wife you can rely on.

Cede her the "power" implicit in a 70 work week, let her revel in making partner before she's 40, let her sneer at how she "beat" you "fair and square" and gloat how you just weren't competitive enough.  Let her languish in her glass-floored office and soak up the thrill of running something she didn't build . . . let her think she's won.  Let her gloat.  Let her feel superior.

Then bang her 23 year old sister and her best friend instead.  

No, it's not responsible.  It's not sensible.  It's not mature.  But that's fine -- you aren't looking for a wife anyway.  You're looking for a choice piece of ass or two to enjoy before you have to open the shop in the morning - aren't you happy you dropped out of school?  The woman close to your own age who keeps pressuring you for a date/commitment?  A career woman?  Don't date her.  Don't fuck her.  Don't commit to her.  And DAMN sure don't marry her.  It just isn't in your best interest.  She's not going to want to stay married anyway.  So leave her alone . . . it's one of the things she fears most in the world.

This is an opportunity for you to use the leverage you have (and it is little enough) to free yourself from the idea that you gotta do college, gotta get a career, gotta make some money and marry some chick from college and gotta get a divorce ten years later when "she's not haaaapy."  Use your leverage to build each other into strong, unassailable men, men for whom the self-important rationalizations of their female peers are beneath them utterly.  Approach every new relationship with a huge degree of caution.

The real look at Men, 2020 is like this: seven years from now, the median age for marriage will go up.  The divorce rate will continue to decline as the marriage rate does (GIGO).  Women will be bitterly complaining about the lack of "good" men, while feminist decry the number of dudes who are getting a temporary vasectomy, ditching college, and heading for the beach for an extended adolescence.

Meanwhile, the Manosphere will be going crazy as the Red Pill philosophy grows . . . and younger Millennial women start catching on to the bullshit implicit with "co-equal partnerships" and start reconsidering their futures.  But they had better not take too long.

Our sperm is viable until we're 70, and our attractiveness grows while yours fades.  Our sons have plenty of time.  If you haven't wised up to the idea that men like feminine women and won't settle for less by 2020 (and that does put almost all the Gen X women beyond the safe age for procreation - sorry!) then you really do deserve (for once) what you'll get: increasing frustration and hopelessness is one of your biggest fears - "being alone" - comes true for you, one by one.  No True Love.  No Happily Ever After.  Your best bet will be sex tourism and finding a foreign dude who needs a green card.  Good luck with that.

But if you ladies aren't willing to learn how to be a wife, then you can forget about our boys becoming your husbands.  We won't let them.   We've been down that road and know where it leads.  Our boys deserve better than that.  If you won't let them become the men they want to be, then we'll find them wives who will, wives who will be devoted, warm, comforting, respectful and appreciative - all the things we are finding lacking in the women growing up today.

And don't think we can't find them wives like that.  We don't mind Asian or Latino grandchildren.  They're adorable.

Hopefully, by 2030 y'all will get your collective head out of your collective ass before you ruin another generation of young women by advocating the disrespect and derision with which you see men today.  But if not, that's not the fault of men for not shaping themselves to be compliant to women.  That's women not being able to themselves see past their own privilege in our society long enough to see the damage they've done to it.  And if they don't . . . well, it's not because we didn't warn them.

The fact is, there are plenty of things a man can walk away from, despite what John Wayne said.  The social expectation that he must marry and reproduce and become a productive and driven member of society is one of them.  Without any kind of incentive of having any kind of good wife out of the equation . . . why should we bother going out with you, much less marrying you?