Monday, March 17, 2008

Ownership of the marriage strike

What is the marriage strike? In your eyes, what do you picture when you hear the words "Marriage Strike"?

You picture masses of men walking off the battlefield that relationships in the Western world have become, you see the men who have been taken time and again and you see the men who have learned from others' mistakes. You imagine 30+ year old women running around, clucking that "men are afraid of commitment" and more generally "men are pigs who are only after one thing."

You picture men saying, "Enough is enough. Slut around in your youth and you won't get a ring from me." Or, "Why would I choose to buy you a gun and bullets and show you how to pull the trigger when you're only going to shoot me?"

One thing you don't picture is women saying that they are choosing not to marry. Talk about a reframing of the debate!

Yup, its true. Check out the article: Women choosing single life as marriage rate hits record low.

Modern women are turning their backs on marriage in droves, with single women now outnumbering their wedded sisters for the first time in 85 years.

However, the article is not the point of my post. Such articles have been printed before. The point is something Irlandes and Rob Case said on the DGM board, and which struck me as absolutely spot on.

Irlandes:

We must admire feminists for chutzpah, if nothing else. The marriage strike starts creating havoc; simply announce that it is women who are avoiding marriage to worthless, scummy men.
Will it work? Probably. They have succeeded at their propaganda for over 40 years. In a year or two, all the women who can't find husbands will be proudly announcing they are on strike against marriage, and will even believe it.

Rob Case:

And the government, alarmed at the plummeting drop in marriage rates (and the attendant effect on all the industries that feed off it), will feel compelled to do something about it.

In countries with declining birth rates, such as Australia and Singapore, governments pay women to have children. It's no stretch to imagine that they will eventually pay women to marry - seeing as how it's such a sacrifice for them, and against their better judgement and all.

Have we forgotten - again - how the women's lobby works?

They manufacture a grievance, take it to the state, then get money for its redress. They do it over and over and over again.

Whoever 'owns' the marriage strike stands to benefit substantially by it. As of now, we do. But we also used to own our houses, own our labour and own the right to defend ourselves.

Currently, our ownership of the marriage strike could be used as leverage for reform of marriage, child support and matrimonial property law. Lose that ownership, and it's all for nothing. More gravy for the Feminist train.

Perhaps this is why not a word of a male-initiated marriage strike gets past the mainstream media. It's too valuable an asset to let men keep. As usual, men are doing the work, but someone else will get paid.

Unless we shout out our ownership while we still can.

This is very real. While giving incentives to women won't do a damn thing for the marriage strike, since when was the government concerned with the ultimate outcome when it comes to feminist issues? The bigwigs are not concerned about the ultimate outcome when they can buy women's votes and pump up the economy artificially by transferring wealth to women, who spend it at a dizzying rate.