Men afraid of commitment? So THAT's why feminists cohabitate! It makes it look like women like committing, while giving them the option to bail at any time. Sorta like saying men are dogs for humping everything in sight while women doing the same are said to seek "liberation."

What happens when long-time cohabitating females leave the semi-union? They sue for marriage-like divisions of assets!

What happens if a child is born to non-marrieds? Simple. The vaginate will claim the kids as HERS and makes the man pay and pay and pay. She'll act like she OWNS parenthood while suing companies who act like men OWN business spheres.

So whom do men sue to get equal status in heretofore female bastions of power like the home and child-rearing? Can men get millions from sexist misandric groups like NOW?

Feminism: As interested in equal rights for men as Hitler was in getting bar mitzah'd.

Do you see any that have anything of substance?

Anything?

Porn, Hooker Boots, Orgasm, Shacking Up, give me a break.

What about studies into why the increased female enrollment in universities hasn't equalized their enrollment in math and science?

Or difficulties faced by mothers returning to the workplace?

Or anything. Must we be horrified that someone is horrified that 19 year olds are shacking up and horrified that hooker boots are worn by 16 year old child stars while being liberated that we can make porn which is degrading and should be banned but we are horrified that the patriarchy wants to force women to conform to their modesty standards and young girls should be encouraged to express their sexuality and blah blah blah blah blah.

Good grief. Is this really feminism or just tripe?

A number of my seminary classmates back in the 90's shacked before getting hitched... The points Tracy made in her post were perfectly reasonable. Her tone was needlessly combative. If progressives would really like to see their worldview expanded, they need to not match the nasty tone of the wingnuts.

That was a rude and crass troll.

The MSM will simply do to the Hispanic and Islamic domestic cultures what they did to African American and "White" cultures. Within a decade or so there kids will be as vacant and alienated as American youth are and addicted to video games, pop product, and bad social and cultural memes.

They will call it "appealing to the new demographic" and provide everyone with negative stereotypes to make them define themselves by what products they purchase.

Wait a minute, it seems that they already have a head start on that, don't they?

Amos 'n Andy was benign and positive compared to what is on the tube today.

One group, however, will not have those negative stereotypes imposed upon them. That is for everyone else, not them.

Like it or not, people respond to stereotypes, negative programming and negative role models and they WILL emulate and copy them. Other people have to correct this corrosive effect on the general culture.

Cheech and Chong meet Borat and Bruno. Portray a group of people in a negative light and they will follow like sheep. Monkey see, Monkey do. Monkey don't think about it. Despite the prattle of "Ape Genius" 90 percent of us act and think like apes 90 percent of the time. Only rarely do we demonstrate our "superior" intelligence.

Trolls and haters are just angry chimps hurling feces with words instead of the real thing and those are the majority here.

If you don't teach people anything positive, that is what you get.

When you program people to be stupid and hateful, the group that does that just might end up getting something they didn't expect or desire. That can be profitable in the short term, but not the long term. You have to live with the monsters you create.

(Why on earth has this post attracted the BroadSheet Troll Posse (TM) vitriol? I can't imagine anything more innocuous.)

Me, I just loved the two-thirds said "it just sort of happened". Yep, that would describe what happened to me, way back in the misty primitive past of the 1980s (you know, when we kept the wimmin barefoot and naked and pregnant and chained to the stove). I most certainly was not testing anything, it just sort of happened.

And once we figured out we wanted kids, it led to a 20+ year stable marriage. Go figure, reproductive freedom, robust pre-marital sex, and several years of "co-habitation" led to pretty much exactly what the conservatives want for us: stable family, house in the suburbs, money in the bank, kid in university, etc. Go figure.

Glad to see that the majority see this drivel for what it is. I have been hammered time and time again on this board for being an out of touch repub (even though I never voted for one), and yet...my wife and I lived together for 5 years before we got married. That was 25 years ago, and we tied the knot once we were ready for kiddies. See, being pro-family is really about the kids, but fems can't be pro-family, because that requires them to think about someone other than themselves. Until the fems realize they dont have the right to shortchange their kids for their own convenience and comfort...they remain a fringe special interest group.

Just bear in mind that "Merely Mortal Male" is pathetic. Never let what he says bother you, because if he was not so miserable and immature, he would not take it out on women. We men find him just as grotesque as you do.

The American wedding (what Laura Kipnis wittily refers to as the "wedding-industrial complex") has ballooned into such a ridiculously lavish, overly extravagant affair that I can see why so many people are opting to avoid it altogether.

You've got magazines and TV shows and movies and talk shows and Oprah and God knows who else telling women from the time they're about 3 that if they don't have some kind of magic, fairy tale, you're-a-princess-too wedding that they've somehow failed in life. The low 5 figures gets you a wedding the guests will leave saying "wow, they really scrimped." Be prepared to either ruin your parents' retirement (if you're lucky) or get yourself into crazy amounts of debt by spending more than enough for a downpayment on a very nice house for a one day affair.

How absurd! My parents were married in my grandmother's backyard with about 15 of their friends present. My grandmother made the food. They made a lovely afternoon out of it. 38 years later they're still happily married.

Perhaps if the actual marriage ceremony weren't built up to be the be-all-end-all of human existence in American culture younger people would be more willing to get married.