Shame and the single man

Dr. Helen is more than a little dubious that women will be successful in attempting to shame single men into marriage:

So now that so many men don’t get married, the society will spend it’s time trying to shame them and discriminate to keep those guys in line. I imagine this will backfire. I was talking to a shoe salesman in his thirties the other day where I am visiting in Santa Monica and he asked me about my work and I told him about my forthcoming book. Without any prompting, he said, “I don’t want to get married.” When I asked “Why?” he said, “The risk is too great and there is no benefit. Even if you get a pre-nup, it doesn’t work. There is no incentive to me.” Apparently, he is smart to stay single according to one of the commenters at the article I mentioned who had this to say about marriage:

Was single, had ample money and plenty of very open minded young ladies to spend my time with. Was having the time of my life, met a wonderful woman then got married and we had a couple of kids. Now I’m in a perpetual state of worry financially, rarely see my nearest/dearests for fun, and get a bj on Christmas and my birthday. Stay single boys, keep living the dream!!!!!!!

So just maybe there are rational reasons other than weirdness and “fussiness” that keep men from tying the knot. But then, that would mean a columnist like the one writing the piece mentioned would have to understand more about where men are coming from and less about how she and society want men to fall in line with what women and society expect.

She is correct to be dubious because what we're seeing here are examples of both marginal utility and female solipsism.  The solipsism can be seen in how women frequently attempt to direct shaming tactics towards men because they find shaming tactics to be so effective with women and cannot imagine that men would respond differently.  The marginal utility of the tactic can be seen in how American men have, over the last 40 years, become increasingly indifferent, indeed, in some cases even openly hostile, to female demands and female expectations of them.

The problems Western societies in general, and American society in particular, are already beginning to face were no less predictable than the problems facing Chinese and Indian societies as a result of their massive slaughter of the unborn female population.  These problems are significantly different, of course.  Contra the feminist assumptions, (and by now it should be no surprise to observe that events have proven them to be wrong yet again), just as the slaughter of girls has raised the relative MMV of the surviving women in Chinese and Indian society by reducing their supply, the legal degradation and economic deterioration of men has raised the relative MMV of the smaller number of men still deemed marriageable by women.

It is simple economic supply and demand at work, on both sides.  The female demand for more education and financial success increases, thus raising the price of the desirable men.  However, the male demand for women has significantly declined due to the increased legal risks and increasing age of women at first marriage, among other things, further reducing their supply.  Anyone who has taken Econ 101 should be able to correctly calculate what the interaction of the moving supply and demand curves necessarily implies: women will find it harder and harder to find desirable men willing to marry them.  In September, I pointed out that already, the math dictates "only one-third of women in college today can reasonably expect to marry a man who is as well-educated as they are."  And that ratio is only going to continue falling as time goes on, barring massive social, economic, or political changes.

This change in marriage-related demographics is not the only, nor the primary, reason the West is in decline.  But it is most definitely a powerful factor in speeding up the process of decline and fall... and trying to shame single men responding rationally to the changes in society into modifying their behavior is simply not a credible solution.