Grow up

I was a celebration baby. I was the youngest of the three of my parents' sons. They had me after they escaped Cuba. Quite frankly, had the Revolution never happened, they'd still be in Cuba, and I wouldn't exist. So you have Fidel Castro to thank for burdening this world with my snark.

As the youngest, most precious son, I could have had it made. I could have done nothing of import and still have been the apple of my mamá's eyes. And let me tell you, my mother would have been just fine with that. We went to buy furniture one day, and she and the Mexican salesman got to talking, and they both agreed that no child should move out of the house until they were ready to get married.

But I was as much American as I was Cuban. It took me a while, but I soon realized that being a cosseted favored son was not what I wanted to be. I wanted to be able to live on my own and not be a burden to anyone. I wanted to be able to depend on myself, and bring something to any relationship besides my swinging cock. Because even then I realized that was in no way going to be sufficient. I mean, dildos and vibrators existed.

When I was with my first adult love, I was still living at home. But I brought her to my brother's house, and I made a feast for her. (Thank you, El Segundo Public Library for the cookbook!) She was impressed. Granted, not impressed enough to stay with me for the long-run, but now in my elder days I realize that was nothing about me, but about the fantasies we all have of partners in our youth. 

And even while I was still living with my sainted mother, I helped with the chores, I helped with the bills, I took her to appointments and generally helped around the house. I grew to see doing anything other as not only churlish, but unmanly, and unloving of a woman who had sacrificed so much not only for myself, but for everyone around her. Yes, my mother could be a pill. But you try holding together an immigrant family for forty years and see how you do.

The myth of the day revolves around the "male loneliness epidemic". I truly don't know how pervasive this is. I don't know if men are more lonely now than they have been at any other discrete period in time. Are we being spoonfed the most outré stories for the delectation of our media betters? Perhaps. But I'm sure it has some truth to it, or it wouldn't resonate.

And men are, sadly, quite well-known for wearing the hairshirt. The statistics of domestic violence inflicted by men on women are undeniable. And such violence stems from men expecting a certain amount of obeisance from their female partners. They expect women to provide the bulk of the domestic work, and expect nothing of the sort from themselves. It is the "natural" and "traditional" condition of things. Women are expected to hold down full-time employment and still attend to the household. And if you're a tradwife? Well, honey, you're even more fucked. That's your job, and woe betide you if you complain about your male partner being able to go out in the world and contribute nothing to the home besides his dick and his paycheck, to which you have no access. As the meme says: Gurl, you're in danger.

The West has transitioned from traditional male/female roles. I remember a former coworker, who is now blessedly dead, who wanted me, in the infancy of the internet, to go in on a blog with him where we'd report on matters of the day. Kind of like what we do here. And one of the ideas he pitched was that women shouldn't be police officers. I laughed at him. But his views are not limited to a minority. We see them enacted by our "Secretary of War". We see them in the polling of Gen Alpha soi disant "men" who are attracted by the gender norms of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. The tzaddik Gloria Steinem died last week, and the cause of women's liberation to which she devoted her life is as threatened now as it was when she began her career. 

We are in a place where women do not need men. They have their own careers, their own wealth, their own resources. And childbearing is no longer sufficient inducement to cleave yourself to a man, at least not in the advanced economies. This is why we see a demographic decline in the West, with women no longer willing to put up with male bullshit just to have children. Even many married couples, like myself and my wife, are eschewing reproducing. The incentives aren't there. 

Men. We must abandon our delusions of grandeur if the species is to survive. Even in the "Third World", as women attain education and independent wealth, fertility rates go down. What human being will willingly subject herself to domination by another if she has another option? We men have to realize that women are not objects, but subjects, with as many human rights as men have. Lysistrata is no longer a fantasy, but our current reality. Women don't need us to thrive, and if it means the doom of the human species, that's in our hands. Conservatives and reactionaries are apoplectic at the decline of national fertility rates. But that's not on women; that's on men who still refuse to accept women as full human agents, with their own needs and desires and expectations. It would be a sad end to our species if it expires due to half of it refusing to acknowledge the rights and demands of the other half.