Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84 SMI; site sun.uucp Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!sun!falk From: falk@sun.uucp (Ed Falk) Newsgroups: net.singles Subject: Re: Another Interesting Article Message-ID: <3345@sun.uucp> Date: Mon, 10-Mar-86 22:33:09 EST Article-I.D.: sun.3345 Posted: Mon Mar 10 22:33:09 1986 Date-Received: Wed, 12-Mar-86 22:41:47 EST References: <496@ssc-bee.UUCP> Distribution: na Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. Lines: 66 > > "Single, professional and lonely in America" by Maxwell Glen and Cody Shearer/ > syndicated columnists. > > Analysis of Census Bureau data by Yale University sociologist Neil Bennet and > Harvard University economist David Bloom might alarm many of America's unat- > tached female professionals. Some of them may, in fact, already be prepared > for the inevitable: that a certain portion of their lives will remain unful- > filled. > > "As they defer marriage, it becomes less and less likely, whether by choice or > involuntarily, that they will ever marry," said Bennet. "The marriage market > may, unfortunately, be falling out from beneath them." > etc. etc. I have the same objections to the article as I did to the last one. I am tired of hearing the same old COSMO fallacies over and over again: 1) "Women who aren't married are not that way by choice." In my whole life I've only met one educated woman who couldn't find a husband. That was because she was so pushy about it. (She started talking about babies and the kind of house the two of us would someday have on the second date). And even then, she was married within a couple of years anyway. 2) "There is a man shortage". No there isn't; look at any census report. What there is is a shortage of men who want to get married (I will go so far as to admit that more women want to get married more than men do). Most of the reports I've seen citing this great shortage arrive at their conclusions by subtracting out the men who are gay, already married, confirmed bachelors or don't have a good job. If you turn that around and subtract out all the women who are gay, already married, want to get married or don't have a good job then you'll find that the situation a single woman who's on the marriage market is no more grim than for a single guy who ISN'T on the marriage market. The situation is even worse in the high-tech, high-education areas, where the men outnumber the women by four to one typically. I have NEVER encountered a woman at a technical school or technical job who didn't have more than enough boyfriends to keep her happy. 3) "Men don't like to go out with women who are as smart as/have as good a job as/are as strong as/etc. as they are". Not true at all. Those stories are told mostly to high-school girls by other high-school girls who can't deal with the idea of competing for boyfriends in unfamiliar teritory. Most men are delighted to go out with a woman they can really relate to as opposed to someone they have to talk down to. There are exceptions of course, but for every man who has that kind of ego problem, I'll show you two women who insist that the men they go out with are superior to them in some way; and I'll throw in an out-and-out golddigger in free of charge. 4) "Men don't like women who are aggressive". Whether this applies to dating or sex, it's just plain WRONG. The women I've known who were they type to take the initiative either socially or sexually were BY FAR the most popular. I knew a girl in college who used to refer to "my astrophysisist" or "my hockey players" because she couldn't remember all their names half the time. I knew another woman who lived with two men at once and had four others on the side -- all because she made the men feel wanted once in a while. She's in her thirties now, and her life has been like this since she was nineteen and discovered that it wasn't a sin or a catastrophe to show a guy she likes him. I could go on, but the point is that I'm sick and tired of hearing this same old complaint played over and over again so often that even MS magazine is starting to believe it. -ed falk, sun microsystems