It is probable all three went through lifeithout ever seeing a man who looked like Cary Grant.But by the 1930s millions of women were watching Cary Grant two hoursa week and silently comparing their husbands with him. For several decadessince then the entertainment industry has continued to grow and coarsen.inally the point has been reached that many women are simply not interestedn meeting any man who does not look like a movie star. While it is not possibleto make all men look like movie stars, it is possible to encourage women tothrow themselves at or hold out for the few who do, i.e., to become sl*ts orspinsters, respectively. Helen Gurley Brown raked in millions doing preciselythis. The brevity of a woman’s youthful bloom, combined with a mind not yetully formed at that stage of life, always renders her vulnerable to unrealisticexpectations. The sexual revolution is in part a large-scale commercial exploi-tation of this vulnerability.
Yes, men are also, to their own detriment, continually surrounded withmages of exceptionally attractive women. But this has less practical import,because—to say it once more—women choose
. Even plain young women areoften able to obtain sexual favors from good-looking or socially dominant men;they have the option to be promiscuous. Many women do not understandthat ordinary young men do not have that option.
.
.
.
One occasionally hears of surveys reporting that men are happier withtheir “sex lives” than women. It has always struck me as ludicrous that anyoneould take this at face value. First, women are more apt than men to complainabouteverything
. But second, many men (especially young men) experiencea powerful
mauvaise honte
when they are unsuccessful with women. Theyarely compare notes with other men, and still more rarely do so honestly.veryone puts up a brave front, however lonely he may actually be. Hence,en almost always imagine other men to have greater success with womenthan is actually the case. This situation has worsened since the nineteen-sixties,ith the propagation of the illusion that there is “more sex” available to menthan formerly.But if women are only mating with a few exceptionally attractive men,and if many women fail to mate at all, there
must
be a large number of mennable to get a woman. We might, in the spirit of William Graham Sumner,term them the forgotten men of the sexual revolution. I have reason to believethat a growing number are willing to come out of the closet (to use a currentlyopular expression) and admit that, whoever has been doing all the “hookingp” one reads about, it hasn’t been them. Simple prudence dictates that wegive some consideration to the situation of these men. In societies whereolygamy is openly practiced (e.g., in Africa and the Muslim world), youngachelors tend to form gangs which engage in antisocial behavior: “It is notgood for man to be alone.
~
.
.
I suggest that today’s bachelors are hardly different from men who, beforethe sexual revolution, married young and raised families.atural instinct makes young men almost literally “crazy” about girls.They have a far higher regard for young women than the facts warrant. Themale sex drive that modern women complain about so much exists largely fortheir benefit. As Schopenhauer wrote:
Nature has provided [the girl] with superabundant beauty and charmfor a few years so that during these years she may so capture the imagi-nation of a man that he is carried away into undertaking to supporther honorably in some form or another for the rest of her life, a step hewould seem hardly likely to take for purely rational considerations. Thusnature has equipped women, as it has all its creatures, with the tools andweapons she needs for securing her existence.
I do not see any reason why young men should be less naïve about youngwomen than they used to be.Furthermore, many men assume women value honest, clean-living, respon-sible men (as opposed, e.g., to death-row criminals). So slowly, patiently, bydint of much hard work, amid uncertainty and self-doubt, our bachelor makesa decent life for himself. No woman is there to give him love, moral support,loyalty. If he did make any effort to get a wife, he may have found himselfaccused of harassment or stalking.ick a friendly dog often enough and eventually you have a mean dogon your hands.What were our bachelor’s female contemporaries doing all those yearswhile he was an impoverished, lonely stripling who found them intenselydesirable? Fornicating with dashing fellows who mysteriously declined to“commit,” marrying and walking out on their husbands, or holding out forperfection. Now, lo and behold, these women, with their youthful looks goneand rapidly approaching menopause, are willing to go out with him. If theyare satisfied with the free meals and entertainment he provides, he may bepermitted to fork over a wedding ring. Then they will graciously allow himto support them and the children they had by another man for the rest of hislife. (I have seen a woman’s personal ad stating her goal of “achieving financialsecurity for myself and my daughters.”) Why in heaven’s name would anyman sign up for this? As one man put it to me: “If the kitten didn’t want me,I don’t want the cat.”Western woman has become the new “white man’s burden,” and the signsare that he is beginning to throw it of
