Glad your student is covering women’s loneliness!! If I have to hear everyone crying over the “male loneliness epidemic” one more time I am gonna lose it. We have had a womens loneliness epidemic since we went from matriarchy to patriarchy and absolutely no one has cared for one half of a second. Being a lifelong obedient servant is - guess what? - lonely! The minute men aren’t doing absolutely great, we are doing backflips to get to the bottom of it. (And we are blaming women for it, as we all must lower our standards until every man gets a wife/sex.)
I feel the same way about the "crisis of male education." Nobody cared if girls and women succeeded or if the system was designed to support our strengths and limit the negative effects of our weaknesses. Instead, we had to learn how to succeed in the system as it was. But now that it's boys and men who are struggling, we're urgently considering how to change the system to help them succeed. It's not that I don't want them to succeed. I absolutely do. I just feel the frustration and bitterness of knowing that if our current roles were reversed, the situation would probably be met more or less with a collective shrug.
A friend who fled a destructive marriage told me her former pastor preached that marriages should be saved at all costs. And now I’m thinking about that message through this lens of mankeeping via religiously reinforced servitude.
Religion has done an enormous amount of damage to the concept of a healthy marriage. As an ordained minister, the choice for me has not been to reject religion, but to challenge notions that are actually not in sync with the teachings of Jesus. He was a feminist who broke all the norms of his day. It was a bunch of men who, for centuries, conveniently ignored any teachings they didn’t like, who set us on a bad path. I choose to take back religion from those opportunists.
Religion has done an enormous amount of damage to a lot of people. I was raised in a southern Baptist tradition, went to a more progressive seminary to challenge everything I had been taught. Now, in a era of Trump doing everything opposite of Jesus’ words (under the guise of being a Christian himself) - persecuting the immigrant, the poor, the hungry, etc - I feel spiritually homeless and deeply grieved for what many in the Christian faith have become. In my opinion, Christian nationalism is a failure of the church to properly disciple their own and grapple with the words of Jesus vs texts that support what they want Scripture to say. I’m so glad you stay and fight - I’m exhausted from the hypocrisy and cruelty.
From my perspective as a pagan, this has always been the way of christianity (the religion, which I agree is not the same as the teachings of Jesus himself). I've begun to think of christianity as the original fascism. I support your efforts to try and reclaim your faith—good luck—but christianity has generally been a violently hostile force for everyone who isn't christian since its very beginning, and especially so for women.
YES this exactly. I believe that the circumstances in which we find ourselves is the predictable outcome of a belief system that demands unquestioned obedience to an omnipotent (and wildly temperamental) father or else. It’s grooming writ large.
As well as to an "omnipotent" and perhaps wildly temperamental patriarch of every christian family within many denominations. A coalition of these particular christians is actively working to take the vote away from women *right now* (in 2025!) because they believe a woman's vote dilutes the vote of her husband and that he is entitled to her complete submission in all matters. Read more about that here: https://msmagazine.com/2024/11/29/christian-nationalism-project-2025-women-right-to-vote-suffrage/
Absolutely. I agree. Sadly I am already all too familiar because I grew up in one of those Christian evangelical households/faith practices and I research and write about it all the time.
My father was the abusive (in every sense of the word) patriarch. My mother truly, truly believed she had to stay with him no matter what because that’s the way she was also raised. The stakes are pretty high when how you will spend eternity is on the line. You really fall in line.
We were insular and taught to not have friends outside the church. The church and my father being the sole arbitrator of truth. Everyone else was “other”. Fierce anti-intellectualism.
Social control through ignorance and fear.
But when you are taught these things as a child and it’s normalized by everyone around you - it’s incredibly hard to untangle those belief systems.
It’s the grooming.
When I saw your post this morning I just wanted to give you a high five and a hug!
"Creating new social options for men hence won’t solve this problem. Nor will raising women’s consciousness about the unfairness of what we’re doing, or expected to do, for male partners. In the end, we need moral ideas that get to the root cause: men are not entitled to a wife who is and does everything." Words to live by. Thank you again for telling it like it is.
My mother managed my father's social calendar, appointments, connections with friends, relatives, and often times co-workers, employees, or clients, for over 50 years literally right up until her death in 2012.
This included anything to do with my sisters or me, HIS mother, HIS brother or sister, and even his grand children. My mother would call his mom or siblings,(upon his request occasionally or after her suggestion, usually) wish them a happy birthday, visit on the phone with them for a while and "catch up", and THEN hand the phone to my father and say, "Bill wanted to say something". Then it'd be a minute or less and consist of, "Happy Birthday, tell Ken and the kids I said hello, and I love you too..."
I heard him, on MANY occasions, have my mother call one of his male friends, acquaintances, or business associates and even a neighbor once, chat them up for a few minutes while he sat there and listened as she went through the motions, "How has Ann been? Are you enjoying that new grand baby?, or we just MUST get together soon and enjoy that new lake cabin!", etc...Then the expected, "Hold on Larry, Bill wanted to speak to you".
Then, she'd pass the phone to him and, after a thoughtful salutation and lead into the conversation such as, "HEYYYYYYYY!!!! I heard Stan died!", and perhaps 20 seconds of listening to how Stan had died because HE certainly hadn't kept up with the old Marine Corps brother, he'd say something like, "Since you are going to the funeral anyway, could you just "stand in for me" and let Emily and the kids know how sorry I am?" You could hear the disbelief in their voice that would border on embarassment and lack of knowing what to say to that, but they'd always kind of awkwardly respond, "Sure, I will let them all know".
THEN he'd hang up, look over at my mother and say, "Judy, get my Amex out of my wallet and send some flowers to the funeral home", he'd go mix another bourbon and diet coke and slurp it as he walked back to his Lazy Boy throne, lean back in his recliner, wait on Mother to serve him lunch on a lap tray so as not to disturb his TV viewing pleasure, and as if Stan's death had been but a blip on the screen to him he'd continue watching the Gunsmoke Marathon.
Another mind-opening piece. One small quibble: Men's Sheds aren't for 'building sheds together'. Inside the shed, using communally owned tools, Shedders build anything from nesting boxes to benches for community gardens -- but primarily, they build connection. The movement began in Australia in the 1980's
My mom and dad had this dynamic, but with a satisfying and emotionally mature twist: they talked about who would be responsible for what and distributed different types of chores according to who had skills and capacity. Mom handled most family stuff (his included) because it just worked better for them that way. When my dad retired (before she did) he had a lot more time so he took over the family relationships to a large degree, and he loved it. I don't know how they managed to do it, because they didn't have good role models, but they did a fairly good job of it.
Before I got married (more than 3 decades ago now), I saw the norm in my then-fiance's family was for the wife to do alllllll the emotional labor. I learned about the concept of "triangulation" in relationships and declined to participate with my in-laws. They have never much liked me ever since 😂 but my husband of 30 years sure appreciates that I don't micromanage any of his actions and relationships.
I can't wait to read the forthcoming work on women as caregivers!
Here's one more term to add to your litany of terms (the mental load. Invisible labor. Emotional labor. Emotion work. Cognitive labor. Kinkeeping): Doble jornada. Spanish for "second shift" or "double shift", referring to the fact that a "working [remunerated] woman" goes home to a second job of caring for children, husbands, parents. I came across this term when I lived in Latin America years ago. As always, our Latin American sisters are aware of and fighting the same battles we are.
Each relationship is its own unique mystery, but functions in a system of cultural expectations. Lo these many years—back in the seventies women’s movement—we en-“couraged” each other to be more forthright in our intimate negotiations. But some of that fell by the wayside.
On my wedding day, the day before Father's Day in the US, my now spouse's grandmother pulled me aside to request that I ask my spouse to celebrate Father's Day with his father (her son) the next day. My new FIL didn't feel like he should have to ask his son to spend time with him. I looked at my new grandmother in law and said "You should talk to (spouse) about this." Getting married at 37 has its perks! I wasn't going to do that work and my spouse didn't and doesn't want me to do it either.
There's the direct effects of the woman's liberation movement. It used to be normal (but profoundly unfair) that woman would do a majority of the work at home. It takes time for that to work its way through cultural sensibilities.
It seems, however, that this issue is more than that. It seems newer, as if a function of, inter alia, right wing propaganda. IOW this would be a cultural measurable effect of such and not just anecdotes.
The "virus" is percolating through the system and that is not good at all.
“We encounter here a Euthyphro dilemma about the order of explanation: is men’s social isolation driving women to do too much by way of managing a male partner’s emotions, mental health, and social life? Or does the fact that women do too much in this vein—because their male partners expect them to and feel entitled to these services—drive and predict men’s social isolation?“
I can think of a circumstance where the isolation precedes the mankeeping. What about when a man loses his job, like these tech workers who’ve been outsourced by AI? His economic and social free-fall was caused by a failing higher education system and an inadequate social safety net. He, rightfully, feels entitled to gainful employment in the field he staked all of his resources on.
Glad your student is covering women’s loneliness!! If I have to hear everyone crying over the “male loneliness epidemic” one more time I am gonna lose it. We have had a womens loneliness epidemic since we went from matriarchy to patriarchy and absolutely no one has cared for one half of a second. Being a lifelong obedient servant is - guess what? - lonely! The minute men aren’t doing absolutely great, we are doing backflips to get to the bottom of it. (And we are blaming women for it, as we all must lower our standards until every man gets a wife/sex.)
I feel the same way about the "crisis of male education." Nobody cared if girls and women succeeded or if the system was designed to support our strengths and limit the negative effects of our weaknesses. Instead, we had to learn how to succeed in the system as it was. But now that it's boys and men who are struggling, we're urgently considering how to change the system to help them succeed. It's not that I don't want them to succeed. I absolutely do. I just feel the frustration and bitterness of knowing that if our current roles were reversed, the situation would probably be met more or less with a collective shrug.
THIS
Thank you for this!
A friend who fled a destructive marriage told me her former pastor preached that marriages should be saved at all costs. And now I’m thinking about that message through this lens of mankeeping via religiously reinforced servitude.
Religion has done an enormous amount of damage to the concept of a healthy marriage. As an ordained minister, the choice for me has not been to reject religion, but to challenge notions that are actually not in sync with the teachings of Jesus. He was a feminist who broke all the norms of his day. It was a bunch of men who, for centuries, conveniently ignored any teachings they didn’t like, who set us on a bad path. I choose to take back religion from those opportunists.
Religion has done an enormous amount of damage to a lot of people. I was raised in a southern Baptist tradition, went to a more progressive seminary to challenge everything I had been taught. Now, in a era of Trump doing everything opposite of Jesus’ words (under the guise of being a Christian himself) - persecuting the immigrant, the poor, the hungry, etc - I feel spiritually homeless and deeply grieved for what many in the Christian faith have become. In my opinion, Christian nationalism is a failure of the church to properly disciple their own and grapple with the words of Jesus vs texts that support what they want Scripture to say. I’m so glad you stay and fight - I’m exhausted from the hypocrisy and cruelty.
From my perspective as a pagan, this has always been the way of christianity (the religion, which I agree is not the same as the teachings of Jesus himself). I've begun to think of christianity as the original fascism. I support your efforts to try and reclaim your faith—good luck—but christianity has generally been a violently hostile force for everyone who isn't christian since its very beginning, and especially so for women.
YES this exactly. I believe that the circumstances in which we find ourselves is the predictable outcome of a belief system that demands unquestioned obedience to an omnipotent (and wildly temperamental) father or else. It’s grooming writ large.
As well as to an "omnipotent" and perhaps wildly temperamental patriarch of every christian family within many denominations. A coalition of these particular christians is actively working to take the vote away from women *right now* (in 2025!) because they believe a woman's vote dilutes the vote of her husband and that he is entitled to her complete submission in all matters. Read more about that here: https://msmagazine.com/2024/11/29/christian-nationalism-project-2025-women-right-to-vote-suffrage/
Absolutely. I agree. Sadly I am already all too familiar because I grew up in one of those Christian evangelical households/faith practices and I research and write about it all the time.
My father was the abusive (in every sense of the word) patriarch. My mother truly, truly believed she had to stay with him no matter what because that’s the way she was also raised. The stakes are pretty high when how you will spend eternity is on the line. You really fall in line.
We were insular and taught to not have friends outside the church. The church and my father being the sole arbitrator of truth. Everyone else was “other”. Fierce anti-intellectualism.
Social control through ignorance and fear.
But when you are taught these things as a child and it’s normalized by everyone around you - it’s incredibly hard to untangle those belief systems.
It’s the grooming.
When I saw your post this morning I just wanted to give you a high five and a hug!
"Creating new social options for men hence won’t solve this problem. Nor will raising women’s consciousness about the unfairness of what we’re doing, or expected to do, for male partners. In the end, we need moral ideas that get to the root cause: men are not entitled to a wife who is and does everything." Words to live by. Thank you again for telling it like it is.
I guess my generation had some of these problems too, or as Waylon Jennings put it ...
Put another log on the fire
Cook me up some bacon and some beans
And go out to the car and change the tire
Wash my socks and sew my old blue jeans.
Come on baby you can fill my pipe and then go fetch my slippers
And boil me up another pot of tea
Then put another log on the fire babe
And come and tell me why you're leaving me.
My mother managed my father's social calendar, appointments, connections with friends, relatives, and often times co-workers, employees, or clients, for over 50 years literally right up until her death in 2012.
This included anything to do with my sisters or me, HIS mother, HIS brother or sister, and even his grand children. My mother would call his mom or siblings,(upon his request occasionally or after her suggestion, usually) wish them a happy birthday, visit on the phone with them for a while and "catch up", and THEN hand the phone to my father and say, "Bill wanted to say something". Then it'd be a minute or less and consist of, "Happy Birthday, tell Ken and the kids I said hello, and I love you too..."
I heard him, on MANY occasions, have my mother call one of his male friends, acquaintances, or business associates and even a neighbor once, chat them up for a few minutes while he sat there and listened as she went through the motions, "How has Ann been? Are you enjoying that new grand baby?, or we just MUST get together soon and enjoy that new lake cabin!", etc...Then the expected, "Hold on Larry, Bill wanted to speak to you".
Then, she'd pass the phone to him and, after a thoughtful salutation and lead into the conversation such as, "HEYYYYYYYY!!!! I heard Stan died!", and perhaps 20 seconds of listening to how Stan had died because HE certainly hadn't kept up with the old Marine Corps brother, he'd say something like, "Since you are going to the funeral anyway, could you just "stand in for me" and let Emily and the kids know how sorry I am?" You could hear the disbelief in their voice that would border on embarassment and lack of knowing what to say to that, but they'd always kind of awkwardly respond, "Sure, I will let them all know".
THEN he'd hang up, look over at my mother and say, "Judy, get my Amex out of my wallet and send some flowers to the funeral home", he'd go mix another bourbon and diet coke and slurp it as he walked back to his Lazy Boy throne, lean back in his recliner, wait on Mother to serve him lunch on a lap tray so as not to disturb his TV viewing pleasure, and as if Stan's death had been but a blip on the screen to him he'd continue watching the Gunsmoke Marathon.
I don't even have the expletives, never mind the words. I'm so sorry 😞
Another mind-opening piece. One small quibble: Men's Sheds aren't for 'building sheds together'. Inside the shed, using communally owned tools, Shedders build anything from nesting boxes to benches for community gardens -- but primarily, they build connection. The movement began in Australia in the 1980's
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_shed
and I'm sure it will not surprise you to know that it was started by -- a woman.
And fixed!
Oh OK! Thank you
My mom and dad had this dynamic, but with a satisfying and emotionally mature twist: they talked about who would be responsible for what and distributed different types of chores according to who had skills and capacity. Mom handled most family stuff (his included) because it just worked better for them that way. When my dad retired (before she did) he had a lot more time so he took over the family relationships to a large degree, and he loved it. I don't know how they managed to do it, because they didn't have good role models, but they did a fairly good job of it.
Before I got married (more than 3 decades ago now), I saw the norm in my then-fiance's family was for the wife to do alllllll the emotional labor. I learned about the concept of "triangulation" in relationships and declined to participate with my in-laws. They have never much liked me ever since 😂 but my husband of 30 years sure appreciates that I don't micromanage any of his actions and relationships.
I can't wait to read the forthcoming work on women as caregivers!
Here's one more term to add to your litany of terms (the mental load. Invisible labor. Emotional labor. Emotion work. Cognitive labor. Kinkeeping): Doble jornada. Spanish for "second shift" or "double shift", referring to the fact that a "working [remunerated] woman" goes home to a second job of caring for children, husbands, parents. I came across this term when I lived in Latin America years ago. As always, our Latin American sisters are aware of and fighting the same battles we are.
Each relationship is its own unique mystery, but functions in a system of cultural expectations. Lo these many years—back in the seventies women’s movement—we en-“couraged” each other to be more forthright in our intimate negotiations. But some of that fell by the wayside.
On my wedding day, the day before Father's Day in the US, my now spouse's grandmother pulled me aside to request that I ask my spouse to celebrate Father's Day with his father (her son) the next day. My new FIL didn't feel like he should have to ask his son to spend time with him. I looked at my new grandmother in law and said "You should talk to (spouse) about this." Getting married at 37 has its perks! I wasn't going to do that work and my spouse didn't and doesn't want me to do it either.
Thank you Professor.
I've been curious about the topic myself.
There's the direct effects of the woman's liberation movement. It used to be normal (but profoundly unfair) that woman would do a majority of the work at home. It takes time for that to work its way through cultural sensibilities.
It seems, however, that this issue is more than that. It seems newer, as if a function of, inter alia, right wing propaganda. IOW this would be a cultural measurable effect of such and not just anecdotes.
The "virus" is percolating through the system and that is not good at all.
Anyway, thanks for more grist in my mill.
- A happy subscriber
“We encounter here a Euthyphro dilemma about the order of explanation: is men’s social isolation driving women to do too much by way of managing a male partner’s emotions, mental health, and social life? Or does the fact that women do too much in this vein—because their male partners expect them to and feel entitled to these services—drive and predict men’s social isolation?“
I can think of a circumstance where the isolation precedes the mankeeping. What about when a man loses his job, like these tech workers who’ve been outsourced by AI? His economic and social free-fall was caused by a failing higher education system and an inadequate social safety net. He, rightfully, feels entitled to gainful employment in the field he staked all of his resources on.
Yes, you're right it could be both/and in different circumstances. Thanks!
Related video, humorous: https://youtu.be/9XOt2Vh0T8w?si=p1LAr8bWJCKvkDCk ; related video, terrifying: https://youtu.be/TA-rJrjRZ-A?si=UcqVafLpqPRYwNkk
😄😅
You’re right - that second one is absolutely terrifying. Even the title: “The Natural Use of the Woman.”