I could go on and on about the good observations to be found amidst some logical flaws in Dave Sim's anti-feminist rant "Tangent", but I haven't read the whole thing yet and I don't think I will ever have the energy to comment on such a long piece that's likely to have much I agree with intertwined with much I don't (and much that's just plain bizarre). Almost anything I could write would likely be misconstrued, to no benefit for myself or anyone else.
That said, Mr. Sim makes an assertion midway through part one that mirrors my own experience:
It is ridiculous to discuss equality between the genders as anything but a feminist hallucination until women agree to surrender their "right" to alimony. Of course women will never surrender alimony because they are not, contrary to their very vocal protestations, equal to men. A percentage of the female population is capable of providing, for themselves, the basic necessities of life. But it is a small percentage, indeed, when compared with the female population which relies on the largesse of boyfriends, husbands, ex-husbands, fathers and/or the government...[These hidden, obfuscated transactions - the husband who finances the start-up of the wife's boutique business, the fat alimony settlement which serves the same purpose, the father who co-signs his daughter's car loan or mortgage, who pays all or part of the down-payment - compel self-deluding women to believe that they are self-reliant feminists]
...and of that small percentage a still smaller percentage of the female population is capable of generating surplus wealth - that is, creating employment, creating excess capital which provides not only for themselves but for others. That still smaller percentage exists in numbers sufficient only to make possible banner headlines and full colour photo-spreads of anecdotal success stories in Cosmo and People magazines: anecdotal success stories which are evasive of a central reality: that for every much-celebrated, much-heralded female success story in a given profession, discipline, art or business, there are hundreds - if not thousands - of male success stories in that same profession, discipline, art or business which are unheralded and uncelebrated: which are "merely" the fiscal foundation of our society and the source of our society's - and most feminists' - material wealth.
If this is false, then women are self-sustaining. If women are self-sustaining, then alimony is unnecessary and must be eliminated.
If this is true, then equality between the genders is an hallucination, a cul de sac of delusional societal "thinking".
(He had a lot of italics in there that I didn't reproduce due to laziness.) Perhaps this brief excerpt will serve as an example of how I partly agree with much of what Mr. Sim writes, even though I think he misses many important factors. For instance, many women are not self-sufficent because they do spend a lot of time and energy raising rearing children. Mr. Sim rightly decries publicly-funded daycare, but the most logical alternative (and the one he appears to prefer) is that women do the job, thereby inevitably reducing their self-sufficiency.
Nevertheless, in my experience -- even removing children from the equation -- there are far fewer self-sufficient women than self-sufficient men. Am I wrong? (I'm not particularly interested in how insensitive you perceive me to be for asking the question.)
I can only speak for me. I've never been married, I've worked since I was 14 to help keep my family afloat, and I'm still in that role more or less. I won't burden you with the personal details of my life, so thta's the short version.
It's been my observation that you can find good and bad in equal amounts in both men and women. I have several friends who have been raised by their moms because their fathers deserted the family, and I have male friends who've had wives that were useless.
I think I'm too tired to be making serious comments :) Bed time for me!
I agree that women tend to be less self-sufficient compared with men. I mean, just looking around at my friends, I know a lot more guys who have a job, a place to live, etc and it's all on their own. Most of the women I know are either still provided for, at least somewhat, by their parents or are married and thus, provided for by their husbands.
I don't know that this necessarily means that women can't be as self-sufficient as men. I think it means that women just aren't. As for reasons for that? Oh, I'm not really sure.
On a large national scale, maybe women are less self-sufficient. However, in my own life, I am and I know many self-sufficient women.
Although I consider myself a Christian, I believe part of the lack of self-sufficiency may come from the belief I (and I assume other Christians) was brought up with that the woman submits to her husband, who is the "master" of the house. She stays home to rear the children while he goes out, works, and provides for his family. That's how I was raised and the church we went to had many similar familial situations. In today's world it is much more difficult to live on one income, especially if you both come into a relationship having jobs and then one of you is expected to stay at home with the children. I believe in the next 30-40 years, we will see more and more of a shift away from women being less self-sufficient. As for alimony, I don't agree with it in most cases but I guess it depends on what a woman dealt with during her marriage. If she wotked two jobs and raised the kids to put her husband through medical school and then he leaves her a few years later, yes I think she should get alimony. If they are both working similar jobs with similar income, I don't think alimony is warranted.
Petra: Even aside from marriages and women with kids, young single women seem to less self-sufficient than young single men.
young, single women are less self sufficient than men. partly that's upbringing, partly that's neuroanatomy/evolutionary biology.
we have a lot of ways in our culture to cripple women. we don't teach them to defend themselves--"afraid of being raped? 'Take Back the Night!' BLOW A WHISTLE so others come to your rescue!" We have different ideas about men and women and money. Women are at least told that their parents will bail them out far more than men are told that, if not actually bailed out. Women are allowed to be ditsy and foolish with money. Women are still not encouraged to fight in an argument, or to demand a raise the way men do.
But some of it is neuroanatomy. Women were never designed to be self sufficient. They were designed to do something TOTALLY IRRATIONAL: sacrifice their own well being for another creature's (their children's). This, for the species to survive, was hard-wired into women. But this is a Core irrationality in women. And then whatever rational structures women build on top of it, they've already admitted a fundamental place where they won't act in ways to protect themselves at the expense of others. So once you've got that in your mind, you're at the mercy of others to protect you--so you look to others to do so, and men respond by providing that sufficiency so you can tend to the task of the child-rearing.
That neuroanatomy is still present, even if the male/female/child dynamic isn't. Women don't think about/act in terms of their own rational self interest; others agree to take on that role instead, in return for certain behaviors.
re: feminism: they don't want women to be self sufficient; they want to eradicate men. Once they do, women become dependent on the State to meet their needs. Nowadays, men are emasculated and women are encouraged to believe that only the State can protect them in the first place--so they become irrational at the thought of the State not protecting them.
A: Interesting point about the root irrationality. That actually explains a lot to me that never made sense before... huh.
The whole notion that women must have alimony because they are not self-suffficient is wrong-headed. Alimony is not to provide a "living" for the woman upon divorce; rather, it is to provide some form of compensation for the unrecompensed services that the woman provided during the course of the marriage.
No one will deny that the husband and the family benefit enormously from services provided by the wife. Experts have calculated the annual amount that a husband would have to pay for a housewife's services. One estimation of the costs of these services was $508,700 per year in wages alone, not counting retirement, health, and other benefits. This amount was arrived at by adding up the median annual salaries of the seventeen occupations a wife and mother is expected to perform, from child-rearing, cooking, and cleaning to managing household finances, resolving family emotional problems and providing sexual services. Even if a wife was viewed as a Household Manager or Supervisor, the value of the work performed would be at least $100,000 per year plus benefits.
And the husband is the primary beneficiary of these services, which are generally viewed by society as "nothing." However, more and more courts are properly beginning to view the household services performed by wives as worth reimbursement and this is clearly reflected by the awarding of alimony settlements.
brensgrrl: You must be insane, or you don't understand basic economics.
Read National Review Online's explanation of what a housewife is worth if you actually want to learn how the real world works.