The bee in James Taranto's bonnet

Much as I like James Taranto on most subjects, I don't understand him at all on gender roles.  He's at it again today, writing about the historical effect on black society of a high ratio of women to men, and extrapolating to society at large:
As this column has repeatedly noted, women are hypergamous, which means that their instinct is to be attracted to men of higher status than themselves.  When the societywide status of women increases relative to men, the effect is to diminish the pool of suitable men for any given woman.  If most women reject most men as not good enough for them, the effect is no different from that of a low sex ratio.
Hmm, always have to wonder about that word "instinct."  Isn't it also possible that the supposed natural attraction of women to higher-status men is an outgrowth of the difficulty of women achieving status of their own, and that it's fading now along with those difficulties?  Hypergamity is nothing I've ever experienced, at any rate, so I'm a little disinclined to accept that it's an instinct.  Why would I look to a man to lend me status?   It's weird.   I want a man to be my partner, not my fairy godmother.  If women are getting used to being able to win their own "status," whatever that is and however important it is to them, maybe we'll see a trend in which they quit chasing a diminishing pool of higher-status men with nicer cars and start choosing mates on the basis of wild ideas like character, grit, good sense, and willingness to be good fathers.

14 comments:

Cass said...

I had exactly the same reaction, Tex.

In fact, I actively avoided a big different in education/age/status/income when evaluating the suitability of various young men because I think balance is very important to a healthy relationship.

35+ years later, that worked out well for me (and I hope, for my husband).

Elise said...

There is so much that drives me crazy about articles like Taranto's:

They never appear to consider that the "problem" may be at least as much hypogamous men as hypergamous women. Perhaps it's not that women want men who are "superior" so much as it is that men want women who are "inferior".

Taranto assumes causality runs one way: women become more financially independent and that encourages men to become more feckless so no one gets married. Perhaps men become increasingly feckless so women realize marriage won't provide economic security so they decide to provide for themselves.

Utterly lost in all of this is any sense of people (men or women) as decision-making, willful actors, capable of tempering their instincts with reason.

Also lost is any sense of what individuals may want, what may be best for a particular person. Is Taranto arguing that if it's better for society that women stay uneducated, barefoot, and pregnant, then that's what women should be? Is that what's required to make the "problem of illegitimacy ... soluble through moral suasion"?

Cass said...

The idea that shotgun marriages were a good solution to the problem of unintended pregnancies*** is so dumb that it defies description.

Unfortunately for y'all, I'll probably try anyway... :)

***men react so well to being trapped into a commitment they didn't agree to voluntarily

I was actually in the position he describes, and my biggest fear was being saddled with a spouse who didn't love me and only married me to keep his parents off his back.

That's why I said "no" the first two times he proposed.

*sigh*

I give endless credit to my spouse for being the man he is today (and was, even then at such a young age). Taranto doesn't know what he's talking about, but then I'm guessing he has never worked for a family law practice and seen the wreckage that comes from bad marriages either.

Grim said...

I read the Tarantino piece, and it sounds like he has something of a point up until the end. The objection you are raising might be both valid and beside the point: even if it is not an "instinct," it might be a well-chosen reason for women running as close to poverty as in his example. The counterargument -- women might get their own status -- isn't necessarily applicable at that level of poverty.

That's not to say that he's right universally, as he surely is not. But there may be a point to be made contextually to the case of the poorest, which are the ones giving rise to the challenges he's talking about.

I've known plenty of beautiful women who have selected "down," as it were -- often repeatedly. I agree there's no such instinct as he describes. Still, it might be worth taking it as read that he's wrong about that, granting that the poor women he is talking about are acting rationally in seeking something like a 'status' they cannot earn for themselves, and rethinking the argument on those terms.

It does seem to point at an answer to a question that we'd like to answer: if we aren't to accept some form of racism, how to explain both the leading indicator of the black community, and the fact that all the bad trends are both earlier and persistently worse there? An argument from a response that was individually rational but with bad consequences writ large would relieve us of the problems of that other argument.

Of course, if that argument is true than being relieved of its problems is a bad thing: it is a kind of lie. Still, I don't think it is true. Therefore I'd like another explanation. The usual ones don't seem to work very well. I might like to think some more about this one before I agree to reject it.

Cass said...

I found it amusing that he completely ignores the passage of the Great Society programs, which effectively made supporting your children superfluous.

Sorry - he's obsessed with hypergamy (but not hypogamy, nor any of the other social changes that have occurred over the past 3 or 4 decades). Somehow, women control everything, which is convenient because that means they can be blamed for every social ill without once looking at a full half of humanity or trying to hold them to account.

I still haven't quite figured out why men aren't more insulted by this line of reasoning, or by Taranto's open contempt for the kind of man worth marrying, loving, respecting?

Elise said...

Still, it might be worth taking it as read that he's wrong about that, granting that the poor women he is talking about are acting rationally in seeking something like a 'status' they cannot earn for themselves, and rethinking the argument on those terms.

I can entertain that type of "hypergamy" for the very poor but it doesn't explain why women who believe that their only reasonable hope to climb out of poverty is to marry a (more) successful man, have children out of wedlock. If a woman's goal is to marry a man to climb out of poverty, she should be doing everything in her power to avoid pregnancy - particularly a pregnancy fathered by an unsuccessful man.

Taranto is making some huge leaps here. Woman want to marry a (more) successful man; such men are rarer and rarer because of women's own success; this makes women decide they can't get married; therefore they have children out of wedlock - in their teens and 20s. Really? I think it's quite rational for a woman in her 30s to decide she's never going find someone to marry and have a child on her own but I find it hard to believe that kind of marriage prospect despair sets in when a woman is 16 or 18 or even 25.

And, finally, Taranto glides right over a factoid that fascinates me:

By 1960, less than 60% of black families were Southern and more than 75% of all blacks lived in cities. But more women than men moved to the cities.

Why did more black women than black men move to the cities?

Elise said...

Somehow, women control everything, which is convenient because that means they can be blamed for every social ill without once looking at a full half of humanity or trying to hold them to account.

This type of reasoning - like the PJ Media piece T99 linked to Thursday week with the title "Wah" - reminds me more and more of anti-Semitism: Once upon a time, this nation was strong, resolute, pure of heart. Then we were betrayed by THEM, rising up out of their natural realm, plotting, conniving, taking our jobs, controlling our economy, grinding us into the dirt. Now THEY control everything and that's why we're weak, vacillating, immoral - it's all THEIR fault. If only THEY would slink back to their Kinder, Kuche, Kirke, the world would be as it was - and as it should be.

Luckily, like T99, I don't personally know any men who think like that. The men I know somehow manage to be kind, decent, hard-working people despite the Great International Feminist Conspiracy. If it wasn't such a silly idea, you'd think they were masters of their fate, commanders of their soul.

Grim said...

...Somehow, women control everything, which is convenient because that means they can be blamed...

Well, if it's an instinct, then women don't control it (and thus aren't blameworthy in the moral sense of the term). My suggestion is that it might be rational behavior among the poor classes, and therefore praiseworthy or blameworthy -- but it would be praiseworthy, insofar as it entails a personal sacrifice in order to ensure a better life for your children.

What I take Taranto to be saying is that what may be the right choice (well, he thinks it's an instinct over which they have no control) for individuals is destructive for the broader society. Now that's an interesting argument, because we can name problems of that type: in fact, we have a name for them, the tragedy of the commons.

The usual answer to the tragedy of the commons is to divide up what used to be held in common, and make it property over which people have an ownership interest. The analogue here (and it is only an analogue, because you can't have an ownership interest in another person) is to break up the common support for poor women and their children, and instead have them each 'own' a supporting partner.

What that would look like is something like a return of stable families. The question is whether the men in these communities are still capable of performing the duties of supporting a family. That may not be true, both in terms of their economic realities and in terms of a character that hasn't been trained by a life of responsibility.

Cass said...

The question is whether the men in these communities are still capable of performing the duties of supporting a family.

Well, if we embrace the time-tested Taranto reasoning, they will... if, and only if, their womynfolk withhold sex (that being the only thing, apparently, that you thickheaded menfolk pay attention to).

[thud]

Withholding sex (and also not going to school or having a career) can accomplish all sorts of wondrous things. For instance, it makes reluctant bridegrooms into dutiful, happy husbands and good fathers.

Like Elise, I find it difficult to take that kind of nonsense seriously.

Grim said...

I'm not asking you to take Taranto's idea seriously as presented. I just think there may be a good idea in there, which could be dug out and cleaned up. I like the concept of a non-racial explanation of these problems -- that is, one that relies on people making rational choices that are right for them individually, rather than either (a) a racial inferiority, or (b) a kind of secret racial hatred that plots to keep these poor people down.

That has the flavor of something that could really be right, even if it is attached in Taranto's formula to some other ideas that are clearly wrong.

Elise said...

What would that look like, Grim? It seems like it would have to rest first and foremost on the idea that marriage, monogamy, and family are not inherently desirable to men and therefore they will only go along with them if they have to. I'm not very comfortable with that.

Cass said...

It seems like it would have to rest first and foremost on the idea that marriage, monogamy, and family are not inherently desirable to men and therefore they will only go along with them if they have to.

That seems to be a cornerstone of conservative thought on this topic.

Roz said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Roz said...

My single girlfriends and I all own our own homes and have good jobs and little debt. Yet almost all of the 30-40 year old men we meet do not have this kind of stability. From my experience, "marrying up" in the middle classes is not even possible at this time, given how so many men have abdicated the values and duties that our fathers had. I think this is a trend that only women like my friends and I are fully aware of. How does that fit in?