–Barry Stevens, “Don’t Push the River”
_____________________________

Stevens was a natural born therapist in the Third Force Movement of the 60s/70s. She worked first with Carl Rogers, then Fritz Perls, therapeutic giants who are now largely forgotten.

I remember reading that line in a “Whole Earth Catalog” in a college commune room in Fall, 1971. I don’t have a photographic memory, but almost everything reminds me of something.

In the context of the full discussion, the typo was appropriate.

Judeo-Christian religion presented a set of expectations, standards, a pattern to follow, how things were supposed to be, what you were supposed to do–you grow up, find a wife or husband, establish a family–that is a cooperative effort, have children, then, raise them as your successors, and this marriage was supposed to last, and not be as disposable as Kleenex.

You might say that religion set up some guardrails within which you were supposed to live your life.

Now that those guardrails have largely been removed, people–without the guidance they formerly had–are careering all over the place, and trying all sorts of strange and ultimately unsatisfactory and ineffective ways to live their lives.

Ways which do not strengthen these individuals but weaken them, do not strengthen society but weaken it, and that was the whole point of the Gramscian attack.

I disagree.

Men – particularly white men – are indeed under attack in the systemic and institutional sense. If I hear one more word about “white men” and how awful they are I will scream. However, on a very personal level – comments on blogs and other places all around the internet – I see an ever-rising amount of misogyny as well. On this thread we are not talking – at least, I’m not talking – about things like hiring. I am talking about a very personal man to woman and woman to man level, and I see it getting worse and worse on both sides and there is tremendous vitriol towards women as well. This is something that a lot of young girls going through puberty feel, and it is one of the reasons that this group is particularly prey to the trans movement in an attempt to run away from what they see.

As far as divorce goes, I’ve done quite a bit of work in the area of divorce and forty years ago men were saying the same things and yet it was the women I knew who were screwed by the divorce courts. This is a huge topic and I’m not going to take the time for a lengthy argument about it right now, but let’s just say that contested divorces are by definition contentious and both parties just about always think the decision was unfair.

I’ve read/watched a fair amount of the MGTOW discussion. I submit that the situation is much less equivalent and far more unpleasant than the comments above reflect.

But it’s not a short discussion and this topic is a day-old. I’ll conclude with a couple indisputable facts which are important factors.

(1) Men and masculinity are under far greater attack today then women and femininity.

(2) Men’s treatment in divorce courts is nightmarishly unfair and there are plenty of burned older men passing the word to younger men, “Don’t get married.”

Current marriage rates are at rock bottom.

Exactly, I agree. And to that I’d add how many women today dress—work out clothes, a slutty look or looking like they just escaped a displaced persons camp.