Pop Rocks: Let's Have A War (On Men)

The struggle continues.

War, as I once heard somewhere, is good for absolutely nothing. Nevertheless, it appears we've been wasting valuable time and resources hunting down enemies abroad when our most dangerous threat is right here at home:

The battle of the sexes is alive and well. According to Pew Research Center, the share of women ages 18 to 34 that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives rose nine percentage points since 1997 - from 28 percent to 37 percent. For men, the opposite occurred. The share voicing this opinion dropped, from 35 percent to 29 percent.

As battles go, an 8 percent differential is hardly Little Round Top, but perhaps author Suzanne Venker has some coherent arguments to make.

Or perhaps not.

As the author of three books on the American family and its intersection with pop culture, I've spent thirteen years examining social agendas as they pertain to sex, parenting, and gender roles. During this time, I've spoken with hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women. And in doing so, I've accidentally stumbled upon a subculture of men who've told me, in no uncertain terms, that they're never getting married. When I ask them why, the answer is always the same.

Women aren't women anymore.

I'm not trying to be all "Who was Dick Clark?" up in here, but I had never heard of Venker before yesterday (among her books, How to Choose A Husband and The Flipside of Feminism, co-authored with her aunt, Equal Rights Amendment opponent Phyllis Schlafly). And I so always wanted to be part of a subculture.

That said, if it's true our nation's women "aren't women anymore," I certainly think a concerted effort needs to be made to determine exactly what they've become: replicants? Terminators? Salt vampires?

In a nutshell, women are angry. They're also defensive, though often unknowingly. That's because they've been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.

There I was, happy as a clam until these dames decided they had a right to salaries proportional to their work and not being talked down to by auto mechanics. Of all the nerve.

Now the men have nowhere to go.

This is true, as I'm told they actually allow women in sports bars now. I'd check for myself, but I rarely leave the house these days thanks to the high probability I'll run afoul of roving bands of angry, defensive women.

Luckily, I understand former Houston city councilman Michael Berry has some suggestions for places a man can relax with his own kind.