you sure about this? plenty of double standards still in effect when it comes to the two sexes. unequal treatment under the law for things like custody, child support and alimony as mentioned in a few posts already is one of them. another one that holds pretty strong is the notion that a man who has lots of action with multiple partners is "lucky" or a "stud" and a woman who behaves the same is a "slut"

I've seen double standards play out right here in the microcosm of PPOT. I recall reading a thread here about teachers having sex with their young students. If its a male teacher having sex with a teen girl, he's a rapist. If its a hot young female teacher hooking up with a teen boy, people on this very forum said the boy was "lucky"

Good for you Matt.

I dream of meeting my equal.

you dont need to be married for that either.

can anyone come up with a reason to actually get married ... besides she wants to and will leave you (either explicitly threatened or not) if you don't?

thse double standards are the problem. thats the point.

if a woman is uninterested in having children ... then whats the problem with not getting married for her?

I often find when people want to lay blame elsewhere, they forget that probably close to half should be laid at their own feet. Every story has 2 sides - and what we are getting here is a lot of one-sided, and of course bitter tomes. I would love to read what the 'other person' in the opening link actually thinks about the guy (if indeed his paper was the result of a contested divorce), or even what POP's wife would have to say about her time with POP, and the subsequent break-up. In general POP sounds like the exact kind of guy that shouldn't get married - yet, he did....

Are the laws stacked in the favor of women? Yes. It may have something to do with the fact that for millennium they were stacked against women.

How about a productive life.....happiness is a result not an end in and of itself.
Shallow thread.

:rolleyes:
If he has any valid points in there I missed them. He lost me at You can't offer an opinion and then call it fact. Zero credibility in my eyes after this statement, so, tl;dr.

The Biggest Myth About the Gender Wage Gap - The Atlantic

It might be the most famous statistic about female workers in the United States: Women earn "only 72 percent as much as their male counterparts."

It's also famously false.

A new survey from PayScale this morning finds that the wage gap nearly evaporates when you control for occupation and experience among the most common jobs, especially among less experienced workers. It is only as careers advance, they found, that men outpaced female earnings as they made their way toward the executive suite.

So, women aren't starting off behind their male counterparts, so much as they're choosing different jobs and losing ground later in their careers.

..."We're trying to compare men and women with the same education, same management responsibilities, similar employers, in companies with a similar number of employees." After controlling for these factors, "the gender wage gap disappears for most positions," she said.

It is rather important to note that the wage gap does occur though because of events often 'caused' by marriage - children.

Quite often women's careers are put on hold, or go a less demanding (and less compensation) direction after childbirth. Women are often the ones agreed to in the marriage to stay at home with the children, whether for a few months or a few years. And after they do return to the workforce it is often agreed by the couple that her career be 'less demanding'. Someone needs to be available when children get sick, when they need to be transported to events, to be always home in the evening. Often women after childbirth tailor their jobs to be more flexible with regards to the demands of children - and those jobs often pay less.

If they do go back to their 'pre-childbirth' careers - their career has been 'put on hold' for the amount of time they were off - therefore will lag behind their male counterparts with regards to seniority and compensation. And there is also the thought in corporate America that mothers will be less available for the demands of highly compensated, and often highly demanding, with regards to hours worked, positions. They are often 'mommy tracked' and see fewer opportunities with regards to advancement. The study linked above shows that working moms average 5% less compensation per child when compared to men in similar jobs.

Also, it was interesting to note that when compared to a single woman, a mom applying for the same job was offered $11,000 less for the same position (if it was even offered to them, mothers, with the same experience and education were often 'circular filed' and not even considered for the position), reflecting the employer's concerns regarding the demands of motherhood and the interference it could cause in the workplace. But, fathers were likely to be compensated more than their single male counterparts, with employers regarding fatherhood as a stabilizing factor, and reward that attribute accordingly.

Yes, women's pay has started to make big inroads into compensation inequality, and the numbers are starting to level out between the sexes, but mothers' pay has not.

There is a Freakonomics podcast on this subject that I listened to recently. They had a guest (female) researcher/professor (Harvard I think) that is THE expert on wage inequality. From the podcast transcript:

The True Story of the Gender Pay Gap - Freakonomics Freakonomics

If you take women who don’t have caregiving obligations, they’re almost equal with men. It’s somewhere in the 95 percent range. But when women then have children, or again are caring for their own parents or other sick family members who need care, then they need to work differently. They need to work flexibly, and often go part-time. They often get less-good assignments because their bosses think that they’re not going to want work that allows them to travel, or they’re not going to be able to stay up all night, or whatever it is. And so then you start — if you’re working part-time, you don’t get the same raises. And if you’re working flexibly your boss very typically thinks that you’re not that committed to your career, so you don’t get promoted.

FP, nobody sounds bitter here except you. Perhaps you're bitter and upset that people are calling (some, certainly not all) women out on the fact that they can be so callous and manipulative.

There are at least two sides to every story. For every guy that gets told "if you really loved me you'd marry me" there's an equally-valid (or invalid, depending) position being taken by a guy telling his girlfriend, "if you really love me it doesn't matter". At the end of the day, do what makes you happy. I just find it to be a real shame that marriage - which has been a cornerstone of many cultures and civilizations for centuries - has finally been undone to the point of being a completely unnecessary liability by our oh-so-enlightened political class. THEY have ruined it. That's the point. If you follow some of the suggestions I made earlier it wouldn't be such a horribly one-sided liability for men and maybe we could get back to a more traditional way of memorializing committed relationships (if we even need to have such a thing - we probably don't but it'd still kind of a nice thing to have looking back at past cultures and how they've historically celebrated such things as joyous occasions).

Final point: your assertion that somehow the blatantly mysandric family laws governing marriage, community property, divorce and separation are justifiable because "...for millennium [sic] they were stacked against women..." is total garbage. Why should today's men be punished for the sins of their forefathers? It's the same devoid-of-scholarship argument that's used by some blacks claiming that they're owed compensation because somewhere in their ancestry one or more of their great-to-the-nth-grand parents were treated badly by modern standards. While I'm just as abhorred by what people used to do and the fact that we used to look at slavery as acceptable behavior as the next guy, that is in no way a justification for a handout. The same thing goes for women in marriage situations - the laws governing money / property / child custody / support / alimony are knee-jerk overreactions to the past sins committed by a sexist culture which condoned abusive behavior. That culture has now gone away and is no longer defended by societal norms so the "guilty conscience" laws (enacted to pander to woman voters post-suffrage) should similarly be revised to reflect what's fair and appropriate considering the realities of TODAY (not 70+ years ago). Unfortunately those laws cannot and will not be changed (as I stated earlier) because no politician is going to alienate the "female vote" demographic by doing the right and fair thing and shutting off the gravy train and the easy path to "free" stuff. The lawmakers are simply reacting (by doing nothing) to the "gimmee gimmee gimmee" attitude on the part of women who want to sit around on their asses all day in a house they didn't earn instead of working.

In a similar vein, I wonder if years from now people will look back on current-day attitudes towards abortion and be as equally disgusted by it as we look back on slavery and are disgusted by it. I certainly hope so. You can respond with your characteristic distorted pseudo-facts and distractions now. I won't respond to them until tomorrow at the earliest as I actually have some work to do (you know, that thing that so many women can't comprehend since they're busy sitting around in a former spouse's house all day watching "Ellen" or "Oprah" talk about what victims they all are and how they have to stick together against the big mean evil white males of the world).

I feel the whole idea of marriage being a choice is overlooked here.
I really don't see what the big deal is... if you want to be single and have multiple partners fine, your choice.
If you want a long term monogamous relationship... fine, get married.

We are also grossly ignoring the physiological differences of men and women.

Yes, sure men and women should be treated equally and have the same rights.

But generally women want security and men... well... we are pigs that follow our wieners wherever it leads us.

Also, it isn't fair but... it is easy for an older man to hook up with a younger women... I would think it is more difficult for a woman to find a companion later in life. (Obviously I have no experience in that area)

what if i want a longer term monogamous relationship without gambling my entire means on a 50-50 bet?

If you can find a woman that will agree to that great!

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Doz5w2W-jAY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

why dont they agree with that? its a perfectly reasonable and adult decision.

because you guys keep letting them blackmail you.

And men aren't callous and manipulative - we could of course address the large number of men who divorce their wives after 20-30 years opting for the 'trophy wife,' using up one woman on childbirth and their youth and casting them aside for a newer model (although, to be fair there are a few women who I guess have trophy husbands... sort of, well, maybe, kinda). There are many reasons for divorce and there are at least 2 sides to every story... you sound extremely bitter and angry. My divorce was a smooth as possible. I actually took the time to find and marry someone who was reasonable, caring and had great attributes. Just because we didn't stay in love didn't mean I chose poorly with regards to a 'good man'. I actually had my eyes open when I entered into a very legal, and binding contract with another individual. He too married with his eyes wide open and together we have been able to be amicable for the years following our divorce. Divorce rarely makes a good person bad, usually people have attributes ingrained long before they are married. You might want to reflect on that with regards to your own failed marriage. People rarely change that dramatically, perhaps you overlooked faults that you shouldn't have, or were blinded by love. Perhaps your ex also was guilty of not looking deep enough into your personality and 'quirks' before she said yes. Again - there is another side to your particular story, one none of us have ever seen, and it could change the perception of your continuing claim of 'callous and manipulative' with regards to your ex.

It appears you long for the days of male centered marriage - a myth that is often fostered by men. There were many unhappy marriages before, as you state, 'politicians wrecked marriage'. Often one, or both parties were just stuck because of the stigmata of divorce. Politicians don't ruin marriages - the people in the marriage do. Again, you seem to want to place blame all around rather than looking closer to 'home' as I stated earlier. Is a committed relationship that is unhappy something that should be memorialized - no. Yet, in the past that was often the case. It appears that along with your wife, the politicians are to be blamed for the failure of your marriage. It seems that you are willing to stretch the blame quite far, however, I would imagine that there is also some blame that could be found at your feet as well.

Women are still far more likely than men to be abused in relationship, be the ones to put careers on hold, be the ones who will care for the children. All those things add to the numbers that you see as 'skewed', but in reality basically show that marriage is not yet 'equal' between partners in many cases. And yes, pendulums do swing, and I would imagine the 'inequality' in settlements that you perceive will lessen over time. However, as recently as 1981 men were legally allowed to not tell their wives of their financial status... 35 years ago. Marriage is a partnership between many couples, and it is a male, or less often female, dominated relationship in others, there are a lot of different marriages in the world, but, with regards to equality often women still have an uphill battle, more so than a man, after a marriage has ended.

Wow - well, I guess pointing out to you the the unemployment rate for men and women are exactly the same wouldn't really do much to lessen that bitterness you feel towards women.

I love men, you appear to hate women.

Oh, enough already. Stop broad-brushing the issue like if marriage sucks for everybody and women are nothing but a bunch of parasitic vermin out to screw all men. Years and years of this stuff by you. Let me tell you - you married the chick that has apparently royally screwed you over. YOU. How about taking some accountability for that? You picked a bad one, POP. Or did you? I don't know, maybe you were good to her, maybe not, either way, she's opted to screw you. Why? Amicable divorces happen all the time. Why not in your case?

Commitment. In the eyes of the law, and for some, in the eyes of God.

You do realize that is musical comedy right?

Might as well ask why dogs don't act like cats... why don't fish act like birds... why don't women act like men?

To reiterate, I believe men and women should be treated as equals... but to think they are the same is madness.

right, legal blackmail. you can't leave otherwise it will hurt you even more.

thats a terrible reason to get married.

wow, thats about the most sexist thing said in this thread, and its by someone in defense of marriage .... yikes.

women are just as capable of acting like adults and making rational and reasonable decisions and being held accountable to them.