New Red Flag Just Dropped: Men Who Are Weird About Women Who Own Their Own Homes
This is a thing? Really?
Look, I just have to say it — men are getting weirder. Not like, real life men, who seem mostly fine and normal and well-adjusted, but the kind of men I do not know in real life, and who, as far as I am aware, only exist on the internet.
Like men who are put off, somehow, by women owning their own homes. This is something I only learned about a few minutes ago, thanks to a rather bewildering article in The Guardian. According to this, what I assume is a trend piece, single women are buying more homes these days, only to discover that the men they date have a weird “thing” about that.
Via The Guardian:
When Tiffany Tate put the wheels in motion to buy her first home, it felt like a win – until a date’s response stopped her cold.
“If you buy that house, what’s a guy going to do for you?” he said. It was just after their first date, and just before what would be their last.
Tiffany, then 29, had just ended a long-term relationship and moved from her home town of Winston-Salem to Charlotte for a new job at a career development center. She had just joined Match.com and was starting to dip her toe into the Charlotte dating scene. Her date, previously promising, was clearly struggling to understand why she would want a serious relationship if she was going to buy her own home.
Tiffany was thrown. “I was like, ‘I don’t understand the question.’”
I also would not understand the question! Hell, I don’t understand it now. My only reaction is, really “How bad does your personality have to be to think that the only thing you bring to the table in a relationship is home ownership? And why would anyone be with you if that were the case?”
“It was pretty jarring,” Tiffany said of that date. “Why would me buying a house be a deterrent for a guy? Wouldn’t that be a positive? He went from seeming really nice to kind of aggressive. Like, ‘Good luck finding somebody as good as me when you’re Miss Independent.’”
Bullet dodged, I say!
This feels like a new thing. The article contrasts the issue these women are having with men apparently being put off by financial independence with the manosphere “wisdom” that women are only interested in men who fit the “6-6-6” metric. Sadly, this is not anything Satanic, but rather some rule that men must be six feet tall with six pack abs and a six-figure salary” to attract a woman. A rule, by the way, that I am pretty sure exactly zero women were consulted on. Especially the part about the abs. I mean, if anything, I think most women I know find that more off-putting than anything. Who wants to date a guy who looks like he’s going to talk your face off about the gym? That’s so boring! You would die of boredom!
I’ll concede that there are lots of women who really care about height, although, let me assure you, there are just as many men who are weird about women being tall (source: I am 5’8”), and frankly, those men are pretty much the only reason I do mostly date men who are taller than I am now. There are women out there who care how much a man makes, but from what I can tell, unless we’re talking about Lorelei Lee, it’s mostly just in the way that they want to be on more or less equal footing.
Tonya was 36 when she closed on her condo, and before long, she experienced friction in her love life. She would go on a few dates, and everything would be going well. “And then they find out,” said Tonya.
It wasn’t just that men lost interest when they found out she owned her own place – it also seemed to trigger combativeness, even hostility, in them. “I feel like it immediately puts men on the defensive, so they start talking about their own finances and what they’re able to do.”
It wasn’t Tonya’s first time managing the discomfort her achievements elicited in prospective partners. She had already learned to downplay her successes as a professional woman working in the sciences. “As soon as I tell people I’m a scientist, they shut down or they start talking about what they’re doing.”
Tonya, it is mentioned elsewhere, lives in San Francisco, which means that a lot of the men she meets are going to be tech bros, and it seems to me that they’re the ones who absorb this shit the most deeply.
Because I do see it. Online, you see all these men talking about how modern society has hurt men by making it so they no longer need to be “providers,” and I think if you hear that often enough, it probably gets wired into your brain that that’s what you bring to the table. That’s pretty sad, actually, and honestly far more “anti-man,” I think, than any discussions of toxic masculinity have ever been.
And it seems the experts agree!
Dr Jennie Young is a professor of rhetoric who popularized the Burned Haystack Method, which consists of analyzing how men communicate on dating apps. Young feels this is connected to how people view gender roles; many women seek partnership with men still unwilling to trade in the traditional “provider” identity to meet them there.
“It’s interesting because the same gender group that’s constantly complaining about how women are gold diggers who exploit them for labor and money … It turns out even they [men] can’t think of what they bring to the table other than money,” she observed.
I mean, they could try being interesting? Or funny? Or kind? Or all of those things at the same time? It is bizarre to me that someone would want to be appreciated for what they bring to the table financially instead of who they are as a person. Why would you ever want to wonder if the person you love is only with you for economic reasons?
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The upside of this article is that it really appears as though the women featured truly do not give a shit.
Looking back on her own home ownership journey, Tiffany, now 40, is proud of it. “I have been able to experience freedom and joy and fun and cool stuff with my kid that statistically, on paper, I should not have been able to do,” she said, referencing the barriers that keep most first generation college students, single mothers, and Black women like herself from accessing the same opportunities.
She also has learned to spot the early warning signs. “Sometimes on dating apps, men will have in their profile little comments about what they’re not looking for – like ‘don’t swipe if you’re an independent woman or if you’re not feminine.’” […]
“Where is the pool of men who are self-sufficient and like to read, are willing to go to therapy and are not afraid of a woman who has a passport? That sounds really wild to say out loud, but I don’t feel like I’m missing a ton by choosing to read a book instead of swiping on Hinge.”
You know, come to think of it, I actually do know a lot of men like this. Most men I know in real life are like this, actually, and I honestly don’t know any at all who are remotely concerned with six-pack abs and six-figure incomes. But you have to steer clear of men whose self-worth is defined by how much they make, who chose their careers based on that rather than in wanting to do some good in the world or do something creative, or who are particularly concerned with “traditional gender roles.”
Not to mention, of course, men who spend too much time on the wrong side of the internet.
Women, for the most part, no longer have to rely on men for financial security, and that’s really not going to change no matter how many losers are out here crying and wailing on the internet about how they want to go back to the 1950s. So if they’re not bringing anything to the table other than “breadwinner,” these men might want to start rethinking some things.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Also, they are "underbabied".
6 pack abs? No fucking thank you. I prefer someone who cares more about what food TASTES like (and can enjoy it) than its macros. 6 figure salary? Nah. Just want someone who loves what he does, has a passion for something in his life and oh yeah, doesn't mind that I earn one. 6 feet tall? Yeah, guilty, but I'm 5'9 and like Robyn that seems to be just as much about their comfort as mine.
This shit is not new at ALL. Ask me and any of my girlfriends what it was like going to Harvard in the 90s when almost every man exclusively dated outside of the university and we didn't have that option really...bc the second you answer where do/did you go to college truthfully, 90% of the times you can see a little light die in their eyes, like oh shit, she's smart. What am I supposed to do now? It would be funny if it weren't so goddamn depressing.
Not all men caveat, I have certainly dated and been in relationships with men who thought my accomplishments were cool as shit and not a boner killer, but the pile of frogs littering my path en route to the prince (who showed up instead as 2 little boys, still waiting on the right dude) would disrupt airplane traffic.