The Dance-Card Problem: College Girls Outnumber College Guys, Misandrist Chaos Ensues
A trend showing women outnumbering men on some college campuses gave the Sunday Styles an excuse to find the worst people at these schools, and quote them. Women get painted as floozies, but men? We're painted as seed-spreading, penis-powered primates.
The problem is that some of it's so, so true. Painfully so.
An entire thesis can be written about Alex Williams' piece, headlined "The New Math on Campus," which starts like this:
ANOTHER ladies' night, not by choice. After midnight on a rainy night last week in Chapel Hill, N.C., a large group of sorority women at the University of North Carolina squeezed into the corner booth of a gritty basement bar. Bathed in a neon glow, they splashed beer from pitchers, traded jokes and belted out lyrics to a Taylor Swift heartache anthem thundering overhead. As a night out, it had everything - except guys. "This is so typical, like all nights, 10 out of 10," said Kate Andrew, a senior from Albemarle, N.C. The experience has grown tiresome: they slip on tight-fitting tops, hair sculpted, makeup just so, all for the benefit of one another, Ms. Andrew said, "because there are no guys."
Forgetting that "there are no men in this town" is the "waiter, there's a fly in my soup" of straight women's blanket pejoratives—especially in New York, where the women-to-man ratio is also skewed in "favor" of men—when literalized, it apparently creates issues. These issues include:
- Questions from your parents about why you don't have friends who are men, or a boyfriend.
- Fierce competition from other women for the "few men" on campus.
- Being good enough to get a man to stop "playing the field" and settle down.
- Which sometime gives way to promiscuous behavior and (this is a quote) "..Girls feel[ing] pressured to do more than they're comfortable with, to lock it down."
- Those things some women feel pressured to do more than they're comfortable with include "a man's cheating" as "'that's a thing that girls let slide, because you have to,' said Emily Kennard, a junior at North Carolina. 'If you don't let it slide, you don't have a boyfriend.'"
- This happens because men are creating a "man's ideal" of relationships, according to a UGA professor, who claims this ideal to be, quite simply "more partners, more sex."
- And then there's this: "Commitment? A good first step would be his returning a woman's Facebook message."
- Finally, men can essentially show up drooling on themselves after huffing an entire case of Home Depot's finest primer, and still get laid.
"A lot of guys know that they can go out and put minimal effort into their appearance and not treat girls to drinks or flatter them, and girls will still flirt with them," said Felicite Fallon, a senior at Florida State University, which is 56 percent female.
Is the New York Times is trying to start some kind of gender-population war? Or are people really as awful as this article would lead us to believe? Probably a little bit of both. Because—real talk—the truth is:
- Your parents are old, tell them to STFU. They're Baby Boomers and tried to fuck everything that moved because the "times were different." Why are you listening to them now?
- If College Girls want the kind of man who enjoys this kind of "fierce competition" over him, then they're inherently welcoming that competition.
- Why would College Girls want a man who doesn't want to settle down in favor of putting his penis in as many women as he could? If they want that kind of man, they're kinda welcoming that kind of behavior.
- If college girls are dealing with the kind of man who reserves his judgment of you based on what happens on "the first night," they also welcome him into their lives to come and go as he pleases. Literally.
- Do women really want to be with a guy who forces them to condone that behavior? Also, does a guy want to be with a woman desperate enough to condone that kind of behavior? Because, really, I don't.
- Noting a "man's ideal" of relationships is "fucking everything that moves" is antiquated, misandrist bullshit. Each man has their own ideal of what a good relationship is. Mine is dating someone with the good sense not to put up with me being an asshole. Lots of men are actually like this!
- People who read too much into minimal communications—like Facebook messages, or texting—are going to eventually go insane. On the same token, since College Girl took College Guy home and slept with him after meeting him at a bar—presumably drunk—under what social contract does him not returning a Facebook message or a text make him a bad guy? If he used an emotional appeal to get there, it's one thing. But if he used the appeal of raging, two hour drunksex, it's just more misandry.
- Finally, if women lower your standards for men, they'll probably respond in kind, by either (A) dropping to these new lows or (B) lowering their standards for women.
Recently, there was a dust-up online when former Gawker contributor Natasha Vargas-Cooper noted on her blog "The Evolutionary Difference Between Man and Bro," citing an example from author Julie Klausner's forthcoming book on dating, noting how disenchanting dating some guys can be, and the length to which those experiences are tolerated. Another blogger—New York Press writer Jamie Peck—stepped in with this:
It seems disingenuous to me, though, to habitually put up with this kind of treatment and then complain about it, unless of course, you like having something to complain about, in which case you should take up a healthier hobby, like shark hunting or heroin. I'm not saying it's not shitty when guys behave this way, but you do have the ultimate power to walk. I'd rather not date anyone at all than have a man who makes me wanna kill (note: this does not mean you can't fuck anyone; it's that nebulous in-between thing that trips most ladies up).
Correct! And there are many men who'd rather date women who don't put up with this kind of shit. It's just that none of them exist to—or were quoted by—the Times.
Again, though: are we really to believe in 2010 that so many young women—Or at least the ones without blogs, and maybe even some of the ones with them?—are really so genuinely, commonly tolerant of men's despicable behavior all in the name of love,?
Evidence would suggest "no," for the sheer inanity that the Times used to set their theory up, here.
Figure 1:
Jayne Dallas, a senior studying advertising who was seated across the table, grumbled that the population of male undergraduates was even smaller when you looked at it as a dating pool. "Out of that 40 percent, there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider, and out of those 20, 10 have girlfriends, so all the girls are fighting over that other 10 percent," she said.
Congratulations "unconsidered" 20%. You're apparently less likely to end up getting brain disease through your dick, as that's easily one of the more despicable quotes delivered to the Styles Section, ever.
Figure 2:
Thanks to simple laws of supply and demand, it is often the women who must assert themselves romantically or be left alone on Valentine's Day, staring down a George Clooney movie over a half-empty pizza box.
*Throws hands up, tosses laptop on floor*
Right, well. We're done here. New York Times, please go fuck anybody but us, today. Particularly, yourself.