Journalist and contributor for Fortune named Jon Birger recently published a book called Date-onomics : How Dating Became a Lopsided Numbers Game , which alleges that romance/courtship/marriage/monogamy is doomed due to a very scary "man deficit." Essentially, the author argues that since there are 1.4 million less college-educated men in the United States than college-educated women, and since people tend not to marry outside their class: hookup culture will prevail, marriage will die, and women will be left woefully unfulfilled. You see, since the world is a veritable lady buffet for dudes, they can swipe their way through as many sex partners as they please, while women are forced to submit to hookup culture, fight other women for the good D, and otherwise give in to whatever men want from them in order to secure a worthy mate. Or else — gulp — settle.
Among the mind-blowingly absurd assumptions going on here: 1) all dudes want is meaningless sex forever and ever? 2) all women want is monogamy? 3) just because a heteronormative patriarchy is doomed, so is the rest of the world?
How about marriage is on the way out because it's an outdated, racist, classist, puritanical model of government-subsidized monogamy that some of us college-educated millennial sluts just aren't down with anymore?
How about women are no longer forced into marriage for economic (not to mention emotional) stability, because they can live autonomously and independently as single humans in the workforce and the world?
How about women don't need to participate in infighting amongst each other for the best mate because we aren't cave people anymore, science can give us babies if we really want them, we can have our needs met outside of one, monogamous, forever-love relationship, and, as writer Madeleine Holden once put it: "Dick is abundant and low value"?
So if hearing the words "man deficit" made your heart start racing in a biological clock-induced panic, then chill, bae. You are a special snowflake worthy of equally special — or totally disposable! — dude, depending on whatever the f*ck you feel like that day. Plenty of dudes out there are looking for their special snowflake, and you guys will find each other if you're looking for each other. No "other woman" is going to "steal away" your "one shot" at "true love" because none of those ideas are based in reality.
If hearing the words "man deficit" made you cringe, because you have no desire to commodify your (or any) marital prospects, then good for you. You are correct in hearing "man deficit" as a totally meaningless phrase.
If your sexual orientation is such that a man deficit bears no impact on your life, then congratulations, for you have evolved past contemporary alarmist woes. Swim on in the lady pond, my friends. Swim on.
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