Some days, I’m just grumpy, at odds with the world, and probably heading in the wrong direction. Wednesday was one of those days. I was fine earlier in the day, but then two things happened that sent my grump-ometer into the danger zone. First, I read an article in The Guardian about how single women are buying houses and the men they’re dating aren’t responding well. Uggh, more gender wars stuff demonstrating that dating in the modern age is doomed if not impossible. The second was that a consultant from a company called Valuetainment viewed my LinkedIn profile.
The Guardian article made me wish I could return to a time before dating became a competition in who could care less… made me wish the engagement had worked out, if for no other reason than I wouldn’t be “dealing” with dating in today’s world. The peeping on my LinkedIn profile caused low-level paranoia while also triggering my distaste for late-stage capitalism and the manosphere.
The Second Thing First
If I had to guess, the LinkedIn thing was little more than confusion over my name. Valuetainment is a YouTube/podcast/whatever media company that focuses on entrepreneurship. There’s a Matt Uhler in Arizona who recently (or maybe not recently) launched his own podcast/YouTube/influencer whatever thing. He’s a business broker and helps people buy and sell businesses. His channel is called Amped Success or something like that. My guess is that the consultant was looking for that Matt Uhler.
The thing that struck me about Valutainment was that the founder’s Wikipedia page describes him as a “conservative media personality, author, and podcaster.” It further states that he’s a strong supporter of Tr*mp and has interviewed Tr*mp along with people like Netanyahu, Andrew Tate, and Alex Jones… I’m not exactly a Tr*mper and would prefer that people who platform conspiracy peddlers and sex traffickers (Jones and Tate) stay out of my LinkedIn profile – even if it’s a case of mistaken identity as opposed to anything nefarious.
When I looked up Valuetainment, one of the first things I noticed was their lion logo. It reminded me of another lion logo used by another CEO who was/is in the manosphere-adjacent business influencer space. He was head of an SEO company in Philly. He had billboards all over the place – always with his picture on them. He had a podcast called the Lion’s Den and he talked in the jargon that I most commonly associate with sports coach / alpha male talk (and also of people who might wish to sell you a bridge): “Build it to sell it,” “Scale without limits” or as in the title of my name-sharing friend in Arizona, “Amped Success.” Lions? Amped? Not sure they could try any harder to signify alpha. Why do all these dudes seem like they’re on steroids?
I’m skeptical of these folks. They all want to sell you their secret sauce for building wealth, and more than a few of them seem to equate that wealth building with the old-school, man-centric way of life – art of the deal, drive a hard bargain, take no prisoners, etc. etc. etc. While looking up my name-sharing friend in Arizona, I saw that he had presented at the Aspire Tour – an entrepreneurship conference which seems to rely heavily on the celebrities from Shark Tank as their speakers. As they put it, “The #1 event for high achievers” and “supercharge your career, finances, and personal growth.”
None of it is my jam. Would I mind a little more wealth? Sure. Have I thought about buying or starting a business? Also, yes. Am I looking to scale and exit or supercharge? No, thank you. I genuinely like the idea of small business because in its purest form, it’s about community more than getting rich quickly. If I’ve grown more averse to this supercharge mindset, it’s probably because of our current grifting administration and because I’m surrounded by tech bros who idolize scale and valuation and quick exits. Ironically, this mentality seems to be the antithesis of really old-school business thinking which was to build a company that would last for generations.
Hopefully, one look at my LinkedIn page (or googling and finding out that I edited a book on the right to a living wage) would convince most right-leaning podcasters that they have the wrong Matt Uhler. As a note to the other Matt Uhler, I don’t doubt that you’re good at what you do… reach out if you want to help me buy a bar out here in San Francisco, I could probably use the advice and it might make for an interesting podcast.
First Thing’s Second
As for the Guardian article…Yeah, it made me long for the stability of my post-divorce, pre-pandemic life – more specifically, life before my engagement ended and I moved away. Dating was better / easier back then, and briefly while engaged, I had the prospect and hope of being done with dating forever. I owned a house (though affordability on one income was a serious stretch). I had a steady job where I had been working for eight years and had earned the respect of my peers. I had a sense of community and I was geographically close to friends and family. In short, I felt like I had more going for me in terms of life’s “traditional” aspirations/accomplishments: picket fences, house in the middle of the street, two cats in the yard, backyard barbecues, etc. etc.
Now, I have different things going for me, but mostly because my values and aspirations have shifted. I gave up on the idea of owning a home (especially out here). I’ve embraced the notion that jobs come and go and don’t necessarily define who I am. I have a strong sense of community and have increasingly found value in doing good for others and finding joy in beauty, place, and nature. All of which has, to some degree, de-emphasized that whole partnership and dating thing. Moreover, when I read articles like this one, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that men and women may never see eye-to-eye again – or that they’re heading in opposite directions.
The thing that often strikes me about articles like this is that they paint a picture in which men and women seem to be talking past each other as opposed to talking with/to each other (and maybe we are). Irreconcilable differences and getting worse. They focus more on the differences and divisions than the similarities and points of agreement. That picture, at least from the articles I read, often skews in favor of (are sympathetic towards) women – and given the history of inequality, perhaps rightfully so… though I’m sure that with a little digging, another article could have been written that says women are buying houses on their own, and men are totally fine with it. That article would be less sensational. Understandably, these articles, regardless of bias, paint with broad strokes leaving out much of the nuance, and then follow those broad strokes with their “damning” evidence:
With all the speculation over declining marital and birthrates in the US, a disconnect between men and women’s expectations of heterosexual relationships is coming into focus. While 31% of gen Z men agree that “a wife should always obey her husband”, young women rank career satisfaction and financial independence as their top personal priorities.
Or:
A growing body of data shows that men engage in higher rates of infidelity and emotional and physical abuse when outpaced by female partners in traditional markers of wealth and status such as income.
Ooof.
I don’t know what to say about the 31% (yikes) – though it should be pointed out that that number is across 29 different countries which include Indonesia and India where over 50% of respondents agreed that a wife should always obey her husband. Additionally, that percentage is lower among older generations (presumably people with more life and relationship experience) with only 13% of boomers agreeing (still yikes). It’s also worth noting that the author neglects to mention that career satisfaction and financial independence was also a top priority for gen z men who voted for Harris while men who voted for Tr*mp ranked having children as their top priority. The disconnect may be more political than gender-based, and these seem like important distinctions to make. I don’t want to push the “not all men” argument, but the sources cited make it pretty clear, that it’s not all men, and maybe not even a majority of men.
As for men engaging in infidelity and abuse – it’s awful. It’s inexcusable. But again, of the papers cited, the one about infidelity was published in 2015 with numerous citations to research done in the late 90s, while the one about abuse is a study based in Australia. Given the author’s introductory statement about “declining marital and birthrates in the US” I’m not sure either of these studies paint an accurate picture of what’s going on in the US today.
Setting aside the questionable citations, the quotes from men (as recounted by the women interviewed) could, and maybe should, be the final nail in the coffin of this argument: “If you buy that house, what’s a guy going to do for you?”; “Good luck finding somebody as good as me when you’re Miss Independent.”; and “Do you want to be the husband in the relationship now?” These are bad takes for sure. At best they scream insecurity and an adherence to outdated views on gender roles. At worst, they’re misogynistic.
At the heart of the disconnect seems to be a redefinition of what the transactional side of a partnership is or looks like. As one professor put it, “It turns out even they [men] can’t think of what they bring to the table other than money.” The question nobody seems to be asking is whether or not a relationship should be about what people bring to the table. Under the traditional transactional roles in heterosexual relationships (what people brought to the table) women brought domestic and emotional support to the relationship while men brought financial and physical (safety) support to the relationship. Flawed as that power dynamic may have been (countless women felt and were trapped in that system), we have yet to move away from the notion of “what do you bring” towards something more grounded in the questions of how do we work together? How do we inspire and care for each other? How do you make me feel? How do you show up? Do we enjoy spending time together? Do we have fun and laugh? These questions have little to do with home ownership, earnings, or economic power, or stereotypical gender roles, and everything to do with trust, care, and the desire for another’s well being.
There is little doubt that traditional gender roles are changing and that women seem to be “evolving” more quickly, and dare I say adapting more easily. If we accept those traditional gender roles (a big if), our great mistake may have been in making it easier for women to play by the rules set out by men (rules that value productivity and earning power) instead of focusing our efforts on changing the rules to more equally represent women (rules that would value things like compassion and care giving). It shouldn’t be either/or, and I suppose the only way is to try to level the playing field while redesigning the rules of the game. To that end, we can, and have, legislated for better pay and greater equality (which is great). What seems harder to do is to change the cultural norms so that we might place greater value on emotional intelligence. In short, we accepted the premise that the system set up by men was the correct system – when maybe we should have re-imagined a different system?
The end result seems to be that women, having fought for and earned greater financial independence, are saying, perhaps in significant numbers, we don’t need men. This, not surprisingly, has led to the rise of the incel (involuntarily celibate) movement among young men (those Tr*mp supporters who want babies and believe women should obey their husbands). Thus, we look at the extremes, and have an arms race towards who needs each other less with each side accusing the other of hypocrisy. As the one professor quoted in the article suggested, there’s an irony in that men accuse women of being gold diggers but also don’t want to give up the “provider role.” That’s probably a fair statement – though maybe hang around different men. Equally fair would be to point out a similar irony in that some women will say they want a partner or an equal, but then expect the man to take the lead, plan and pay for dates, and assume some of those traditional gender roles that define “manliness.” Again, we seem to be talking past each other as opposed to finding nuance and common ground. Digging in as opposed to building up through compromise and understanding.
After reading the article, I was not feeling particularly hopeful. It all felt too transactional and focused on the wrong things. I don’t want my relationships to be about tit for tat power dynamics or leverage or keeping score. I genuinely believe that we need each other and that we work best through what therapists often describe as effective dependency – not co-dependency, but a filling in for each other’s gaps, a shouldering of the load when our partner can’t. Admitting that we need other people gives us a common foundation based on shared vulnerability – saying that we don’t gives us leverage. I’m not interested in leverage. The move of either gender towards the mirage of independence seems to be the equivalent of folding one’s arms and saying I’m taking my toys and going home. Moreover, it suggests a lack of humility. Is there such a thing as being entirely self-sufficient? We all need support in one form or another, and traditionally, that has come from our primary partner and our immediate family. At the end of the day, all relationships involve compromise, and one can find a type of beauty in the sacrifice. But those aren’t the articles that get written. Those aren’t the articles that generate clicks.
The grumpiness was short lived. The clouds dissipated and the raised fist stopped shaking. As is so often the case, it took me a lot longer to articulate my thinking than it did to get over my initial reactions. Yes, I’m tired of grifters and machismo. And yes, I do wish I had gotten off the dating hamster wheel years ago when it looked like I was done with dating and neither of us cared about who brought what to the table.