MAY THEY FIND HAPPINESS WITH THEIR CATS.  Neo-Neocon predicted that Kay Hymowitz's recent essay about young men being turned off by contemporary women would "engender a fair amount of heated discussion."  Indeed it did, and we've seen only the moderate reaction here.  Ms Hymowitz has received a lot of feedback, some of it negative, and she's responding.

Men are really, really angry. Consider: “We’re not STUCK in pre-adulthood, we choose it because there aren’t any desirable American women. They’ve been bred to abuse men.” This fairly typical response that appeared at the Seattle Post Intelligencer website: “Sorry ladies. In the age of PlayStation 3s, 24-hours-a-day sports channels, and free Internet porn, you are now obsolete. All that nagging, whining, and stealing our hard earned cash have finally caught up to you."

Shocked? I wasn't. During the last few years researching this age group, I’ve stumbled onto a powerful underground current of male bitterness that has nothing to do with outsourcing, the Mancession, or any of the other issues we usually associate with contemporary male discontent. No, this is bitterness from guys who find the young women they might have hoped to hang out with entitled, dishonest, self-involved, slutty, manipulative, shallow, controlling—and did I mention gold-digging?

Her article provides links to some real rip currents. There's a more restrained current, dating at least back to a 2003 Joe Katzman post on the men's marriage strike.

It is not a movement, or a self-consciously political effort... just the aggregate of millions of rational personal decisions. In that aggregate, however, the effects are as significant as they are quiet. Like the DDT-filled birds' eggshells that cracked under their own weight, these decisions are a sign that all is not well in the broader environment. A sign we ignore at our own peril. We get the society, and the circumstances, that we create for ourselves. 

Joanne Jacobs suggested in 2008 that conditions were not all that bad, only to elicit ripostes in the bull session to the effect that conditions were all that bad.  Ms Hymowitz recognizes that yes, conditions are all that bad.

Far worse in the bait and switch category is women’s stated preference for nice guys and actual attraction to bad boys. Now, clearly this is not true for all women. Many, maybe even most, want a guy with the sweetness of a Jimmy Stewart and sensitivity of Ashley Wilkes. But enough of them are partial to the Charlie Sheens of this world that one popular dating guru, David DeAngleo, lists “Being Too Much of a Nice Guy” as No. 1 in his “Ten Most Dangerous Mistakes Men Make With Women.”

That's relatively tame. Go to one of the sites she researched.

According to feminism, which most young women believe, men aren’t meant to be providers, protectors or moral/spiritual leaders. Chastity is out. A boring, good-paying job is out. Morality is out. Sobriety is out. Apologetics and theology are out.

What’s in? Being good-looking, inoffensive, and entertaining. Women are not selecting responsible men because they think that the men can be changed to be responsible, through sex, or maybe through nagging, and eventually through the threat of losing all his money and custody of his children. Men aren’t stupid. They’ve noticed that responsibility and morality are out, and they’re acting like clowns because that’s what women prefer when getting drunk and hooking up, the Duke University student and her report on all the men she slept with – they were graded by physical attractiveness, sexual technique, popularity and athletic ability.

Men do what women expect them to do in order to get sex. Just read the peer-reviewed studies on hooking up. If women don’t select men who can do specific things as husbands and fathers, then men won’t prepare themselves to do specific things. If they are already getting sex for playing the fool, then why should they do more than play the fool? If women obsessed over Paul Ryan and William Lane Craig, then that’s what men would aspire to. They don’t, and so men don’t. Mature men intimidate women with their strong opinions, moral judgments, and exclusive theological claims. Much better to have an immature man who is shallow and politically correct.

Or contemplate the short form, from Captain Capitalism.

In short you have made a life of bachelortude and singledom more attractive an option (economically, socially and romantically) than marrying you.

Put differently, find happiness with your cats.

Manning Up promises to make for an interesting book review.