New Zealand Equality Education Foundation

(incorporating the International Ex-Fetus Association)

Marriage as Economic Exploitation of the Male

© Peter Zohrab 2006

 

Academic Myth

It has been widely reported that a recent study on marriage and wealth has found that marriage increases your wealth. This study, "Marriage and Divorce’s Impact on Wealth", by Jay L. Zagorsky, was published in the Journal of Sociology Vol. 41, No. 4, 406-424 (2005)*.

In fact, however, the study arguably proves something completely different from what it claims to prove, and it is a sad commentary on Western universities and media, now that the Feminists and other politically correct people are in control.

"A Feminist uses statistics like a fish uses a bicycle" (as Christina Hoff Sommers wrote in Figuring Out Feminism. in National Review magazine, June 27, 1994), and there is a widespread belief that Sociology is Feminism in sheep's clothing. So it is not surprising that this study misuses statistics.

The study states that "Divorced respondents’ wealth starts falling four years before divorce...." That is odd, for a start -- only in the field of nuclear physics has anyone ever tried to claim that a cause came after an effect ! If their wealth started falling before the divorce happened, then it would be natural to assume that the drop in wealth (or something else) caused the divorce -- not that the divorce retroactively caused the drop in wealth ! The author tries to explain this by assuming that the drop in wealth is caused by separation, which occurs before the actual divorce, but he does not produce statistics to prove this. In fact, of course, the average period of separation prior to divorce is unlikely to be anything close to four years.

 

Masculist Reality

It is well-known that women are attracted to wealthy men. Women talk without apparent embarrassment about wanting to marry a millionnaire. It is rare for men to talk about marrying a rich woman. Even amongst non-human animals, females often value males in proportion to their territorial or other property assets -- See, for example, http://entomology.unl.edu/lgh/ent806/Lecture17_mating.htm . The converse of that is, presumably, that women may fall out of love with a man whose wealth decreases. In fact, it is widely believed in the Men's/Fathers' Movement that social welfare payments for single mothers are an incentive to separation and divorce, so that the State, in effect, replaces the father as provider.

 

Exploitation

Feminists have an entire research industry devoted to classifying as exploitation (by men of women) every imaginable aspect of male-female relationships. Naturally, therefore, prostitution is sometimes described as exploitation of women by men. In fact, however, it involves the financial exploitation (mainly by women) of the sex-drives of (mainly) men.

It has often been pointed out that marriage can also be described as prostitution, whereby the female provides sex in return for financial support. That model does not fit all marriages totally, of course, but it certainly fits many marriages to a large extent.

 

Pay Equity

It follows from the above that there may be an argument for ensuring that men have higher salaries than women -- otherwise Society ends up with a lot of fatherless children, because their mothers are unable to find men richer than themelves to whom they can feel attracted on a long-term basis.... Hello ! That is exactly what we have in Western societies today!

(* The author states, in an email to me, that "The goal of the paper was to track changes over time. The primary goal was not to investigate cause and effect." Jeff Grabmeier (Assistant Director, Research Communications Ohio State University), in an email to me, states: "You are right that the data collected in this study cannot prove one way or the other the direction of causality.")

 

Last Update: 28 January 2006